


Maybe with a chance of certainty

by Suzilee11



Series: Tales of Beacon Hills High [1]
Category: teen wolf - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bullying, Coming Out, First Kiss, First Love, Gay Derek, Gay Stiles, High School, Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:01:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21854023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suzilee11/pseuds/Suzilee11
Summary: Derek is a jock that needs to pass his economics midterm to stay on the lacrosse team.Stiles is a nerd that no one seems to know even exists.However they both have a secret that is revealed when there paths cross as Stile tutors Derek.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Series: Tales of Beacon Hills High [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1573897
Comments: 11
Kudos: 97
Collections: Sterek love





	Maybe with a chance of certainty

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be a part of a series that will have 3 parts to it.  
It is based on a series that i love called Tales of Foster High written by John Goode.  
I have rewritten the story to match the teen wolf world in certain ways, also changing some parts of the story that seemed unnecessary for my story.  
No copy-write is intended, all the original work belongs to John Goode. Still i hope you like this series and leave me some comments letting me know what you think. 
> 
> It will be many months before the next part is released, so i apologize in advanced for anyone who wants to see what happens next.

I don’t remember the moment I knew I was broken. 

I was 17 and on the edge of an 18 that seemed terrifying to a young man not sure of his sexuality. I knew I liked guys but was still under the delusion that an attraction to guys didn’t make you gay, just like drowning didn’t mean you were breathing water. It just made you different, and as we all know, in high school there is nothing worse than being different. Though every TV show or movie will tell you the wacky, zany, oddball character is not only cool but necessary component in most social settings, no one has ever closed their eyes and wished they ended up being Screech. I never assumed I was broken, coming from a single-parent family that consisted of a dad who spent more time drinking and partying than being an actual parent – not that I had any idea what an actual parent looked like. Pop culture had taught me that a dad was either working a 9 to 5 shift coming home from work and spending time with their kids, or a cool single man who worked to hard to spend much time with his children or date. My dad was neither of those, and the concept of a mother was about as familiar as me walking on the moon.  
I was emotionally retarded in a way that made connecting with another human being so daunting a task that even considering it could cause my heart to race and my breath to stop altogether. Since junior high boys had made me feel funny, and not in a laughing sort of way. That clumsy, all feet and no balance stutter that most teenage boys feel towards girls, I would get in the locker room. Let me assure you no one sounds slick stuttering like they are having a seizure. All sound drained away as my vision zeroed in on the boy next to me as he slipped out of his jeans. More than once I had found myself forcing my yes to look away so I could finish dressing out for PE.  
By the time I started high school, I had constructed a virtual igloo of emotional distance between me and everyone else. I projected a coldness that bordered on snobbery. I was the guy everyone knew of, but no one could recall speaking to personally. I imagined myself an urban legend of Beacon Hills High School, like the Sasquatch or a Chupacabra. Everyone had a friend who had seen me talking to someone, but no one had ever talked to me directly. I was a ghost wandering the halls, head down, backpack over one shoulder, eyes focused on where my next step would take me and nothing more. In a social environment where being cool and liked were currency, I was a monk who had taken a vow of celibacy. I sidestepped conversations, ate lunch by myself, and practically ran home after school. 

I didn’t know it, but I was broken in a way that wasn’t readily evident to those around me. 

As anyone who has read comic books knows, when one sense is taken from you, the others become almost superhuman, allowing the you the ability to get by in life the best you possibly can. Since I was completely and utterly void of any knowledge of how emotions worked for other people, my mind had taken the unused space and used it to amplify what books smarts I already possessed to Rain Man level of intellect. I was the person who never needed to study, never needed to read anything more than once, and always finished the test first. I am sure in some alternate universe there was a high school where being a nerd was cool. That possessing a vast array of useless knowledge would be a badge of notoriety and it would have garnered me some kind of social worth. Alas, I was not born there. Instead, my brain made me a nerd at worst, at best the quiet, smart guy who never seemed to look up when he walked. 

I think that’s why I never saw him coming. 

I knew who he was, of course; everyone did. His name was Derek Hale, and he was one of those lucky few who walked on rarefied air as he passed by in the hall. He was on the Lacrosse team, and every image I had of him before we met was of him wearing a lettermen jacket, red with white leather sleeves adorned with a huge BH on his lapel, making him look like a superhero amidst the rest of us normal people. He wasn’t perfect-looking, though he was closer to it than most, but he was good-looking enough to get you to turn your head at least once, and with Derek, once was all he needed. With his black hair with green eyes, he was the very model of a modern teenage athlete, strong features with just a hint of prettiness that made him irresistible.  
He had to know how popular he was, but it never came across when he talked. There was earnestness in his attitude that made you want to like him despite all of the obvious benefits already bestowed on him by the universe in general. I never knew anyone to dislike or take umbrage with his obvious gifts as was so common in the high school ecosystem. Normally people like him were coveted and loathed behind their backs, but this was not true when it came to Derek. It was as if instead of pushing those around him down by reminding them of his physical superiority, he shared it somehow, like when you were talking to him, somehow you were made more popular as well. I had, of course, never talked to him, but I had eaten lunch near the group of people that gathered to his feet every noon to break bread. Being in his presence was almost akin to listening to royalty speak, by the way people hung on his every word. No matter what the subject, there seemed to be a gravity about it that made even the most trivial of subjects seem important. His voice was strong and soothing, containing none of the odd tones and subliminal insecurities most high school boys possessed. It was easily recognisable above the noise of a crowd, and no matter where he was in a room it commanded attention.\

Which is why, when I heard it coming from right in front of me, I almost screamed. 

I had been walking through the hall as I normally did, head down, concentrating only on getting out of the building. Navigating a high school hallway is no easy task, since the inborn pocket of comfortable space most people possess seems to have no value when you have 15 minutes to run to your locker, grab your books for your next class, and catch up with gossip before you are tardy. If you weren’t careful, you could get body checked more times than a forward at a hockey game without even the briefest of acknowledgements by the person who had committed the personal foul. I had perfected an almost radar-like ability of passing by a crowd of people without them ever knowing I was there. So, when I saw a set of size 12 Converse sneakers directly in my path that day, I swerved sharply left to avoid the collision. The sneakers moved to intercept me. As I tried to pull right, I heard his voice say, “Hey,” and mentally, I lost it.  
There is nothing worse than your body reacting to someone before your brain can even recognize who it is. It is a Pavlovian response when you run into someone you are attracted to and aren’t ready for it. There is a something that runs up your spine, as if every particle of your being is being magnetically pulled to the other person. Whatever automatic system your body has for keeping itself upright and moving temporarily fails, and inevitably you are going to stumble like your sneakers have grown 3 sizes too big. 

And because I was a teenage boy, I instantly got hard. 

There are few materials known to man more unforgiving to an erection than denim. It is course, dense, and not even the least bit interested in giving you an inch or two of room as the swelling member gets bigger. I don’t know any male who has not felt the gnawing maw of jeans clamping down on his member at least once in his life. Sitting down, standing up, running laps, eating lunch – there is never a penis that is as comfortable hard as it is soft in a pair of jeans. The only thing worse than throwing a bone in the middle of a hallway while standing in front of a straight guy is adjusting your hard-on in the middle of a hallway in front of said straight guy without seeming like you are playing with yourself.  
So as my member slid down my jeans inch by agonising inch, I forced myself to focus on a spot between his eyes and tried to replicate the heterosexual male head nod that all teenage boys except me seemed to know, and responded with a, “Hey” that was a few octaves higher than I initially intended. My right hand was still gripping the history book and folder I had just retrieved from my locker, so as he began to talk, I tried to move the book in front of my groin as unnoticeably as possible. 

“So, you’re kind of smart, right?” His question that was far more rhetorical than an actual inquiry, since he kept talking without waiting for an answer. “Because Finstock is a cool coach, but he is a dick about grades.” 

This only made sense if you knew how our high school worked.

Coach Finstock was a bulldog of a man who spent his day coaching Lacrosse and teaching Economics. That would seem to be a godsend to our school’s jocks, who had to maintain a grade point average of 2.75 to stay on the team. They thought that since he coached them, his economics class would be a breeze. So every year, the new group of jocks would do everything they could to make sure they got into his class. 

And every year, a fresh group of boys found out that Coach Finstock did not believe in a free ride. 

Derek had paused to wait for some kind of response from me, which was his second mistake; his first was expecting me to be normal in the first place. I wasn’t used to talking to actual people, much less people waiting for me to respond to them. I had lost myself doing 2 different things that ended up becoming 1, and I was completely unaware of him waiting for me. My gaze had moved from the space between his eyes and drifted to the almost luminescent green of his irises and had stayed there for a few long seconds. At the same time, my hand had moved the book over my now hard dick and instead of just covering it from view, it pressed against it. 

And the two things had become one. 

His eyes led me to the ruddy blush of his cheeks, which, upon closer inspection, seemed to hide pale freckles that made his skin seem much more perfect with its newfound imperfections. His freckles led down to what I could see of his muscled neck. It was hidden by the collar of his jacket on either side, and I saw the first Adam’s apple I was ever transfixed by. His neck led my eyes to a thin white T-shirt that seemed to accentuate the hard muscles that made up the twin curves of his pecs instead of covering them. The way the cotton seemed to dip between them almost invited a person to see how deep the space between them actually was. I could see the impression of a chain underneath, and when he shifted his weight and I spotter the glint of silver between the white T-shirt and the jacket, I felt like I had almost seen the band of his underwear.  
You okay?”

My head jerked up so fast it was a blur as I realized I was still standing in the middle of a high school hallway with a huge erection covered only by my Economics book. “Yeah,” I said quickly, not sure exactly what question I was answering. 

Obviously, he didn’t either, because he cocked his head like a dog and asked, “Um, to which one?” 

“What?” I asked, as confused as he was, if that was possible. And then whatever buffer that had frozen in my head freed itself, and time started moving normally again. “Yes,” I said again, now answering his question, followed by a sharp, “No.” Which didn’t sound good. “I mean, I don’t …what do you mean by smart?” I could see in his eyes that whatever hopes he had that I possessed any superior intellect were dwindling quickly as it became apparent I couldn’t even string together a sentence. “I mean, there is street-smart, and there is, like, math smart, which I’m not because numbers suck, so not really, but if you’re talking about…” I began to ramble. 

“Economics,” he said, cutting me off. “Coach Finstock teaches Economics, and you seem good at it.” He was talking slowly now as if he were trying to communicate with an alien. “Are you?” 

“Yes,” I answered, trying to swallow. 

We stood staring at each other for about five seconds before he just shook his head. “You know what? Forget it.” He began to walk away. 

And only then did I realise that one of the best-looking guys in school had just been talking to me and was now walking away from me. I tried to calculate all of the different possibilities that would have made someone like him talk to someone like me. Was I getting cooler? Did he know I liked guys? Did he like guys? Did he like me? Was this a vain attempt to reach out and get me to understand that there was someone else in this world as lonely as me? Maybe he was trying to get across in code or something that he … This is when my brain screamed at me. He needs help with his Economics homework, you retard!  
“Wait,” I said, turning around after him. He paused and looked back at me, and I felt my mind begin to get lost in the lines of his chin, so I blurted out, “I can help you” 

He raised an eyebrow as the people walking past us stared, no doubt wondering what exactly that meant. I realised I had broken another cardinal rule of surviving high school besides “never look up” and “always bring your own lunch”: never talk to someone else in front of people. 

I was talking to someone else in front of other people. 

I took several steps toward him to minimise how loud I had to speak. “With your economics,” I amended. “I can help you.” 

“I need to pass the midterm,” He said in the same conspiratorial tone I was using. “If I don’t, I’m toast.” 

I nodded both to the spoken and unspoken sentiments. I could indeed help him study for the midterm, and I was aware he would be tossed off the team if he filed it. And in a culture that is completely popularity-driven, like high school, being stripped of his letterman jacket was akin to being cast out from the pantheon of high school gods and forced to wander the barren earth with us commoners.  
The ironic part is not once did I consider not helping him simply out of spite.  
He was one of the golden boys who somehow seemed to deserve the spotlight of attention they received. Resenting or even trying to deny him that kind of adoration just seemed to be cruel and unusual form of punishment. Imagining him not being one of the most popular boys in school was like picturing a beautiful golden retriever caked with mud or a masterpiece of a painting covered with years of grime and dust. I think that was his secret, the reason he was so well liked even though he didn’t seem tot ry. People naturally wanted to help him, and I’m sure the fact that he resembled most people’s concept of an ideal teenage boy in his prime didn’t hurt. 

“It’s next week. We’d need to study pretty hard,” I said, wondering what exactly I was getting myself into. “We could meet after school in the library – “ 

He shook his head, cutting me off. “I have practise, has to be after that.” 

I paused. “But the library closes at 5.” 

He shrugged. “Then come over to my house and we’ll study there.” 

I froze.

“Or we could go to yours,” He started to say. 

“We’ll go to yours!” I blurted out, not letting my overactive imagination have even a second to envision the horror of my father stumbling out of his room, hungover and wondering why there was someone else in the house. 

“Cool,” He said, nodding to himself. “You need a ride, or do you have a car?” 

“I do not have a car,” I said tonelessly, still in shock as I realised that by not wanting him to come to my house, I had agreed to go to hi.

“Cool,” he said with an easy smile. “Meet me by the locker room after five; I can drop you off at home afterward, okay?”

My head nodded all by itself. 

“Awesome. Thanks, man,” He said, turning around and then pausing. “Um, I hate to ask this… but I really don’t know your name.” He seems contrite and embarrassed all at once, which made him about a thousand times more attractive in my eyes. 

I paused for an impossibly long moment as I realised, I didn’t remember my name either. “Stiles!” I blurted out as the memory of my name stumbled across the tip of my tongue. “My name is Stiles!” I tried again, reinforcing it out loud again.  
His smile turned into a wide grin as he held out his hand. “I’m Derek.” 

“I know,” I said before I could stop myself. His hand closed on mine, and his head tilted to the right a bit as his eyes locked onto mine, as if he were considering these words carefully. I felt my stomach fall out from under me as I realised what the hell I had just said. “I mean, everyone knows you,” I amended, and I followed that up with a nervous little serial killer chuckle that would convince absolutely no one I wasn’t crazy. 

He held my hand for a second too long as he said nothing and then slowly nodded. “Okay, Kyle. Cool.” He let go, but I could still feel the warmth of where his skin had touched mine. “So after five?” My head did the bobblehead nod as I agreed. He laughed a little to himself as he turned away. “Awesome, see you then.” 

I tried not to stare at the way his jeans hugged his ass as he walked away. 

I tried but failed pretty badly. 

I generally avoided the locker room like a West Hollywood twink hopeful avoids solid food. 

PE and watching normal guys get undressed was bad enough; the thought of actual athletes getting naked, standing around snapping towels at each other, soaping up under hot showers… 

This is the gay equivalent of how straight guys view girls having a slumber party.  
Derek came out, letterman jacket in place, duffel bag over one shoulder, hair damp and spikey from lack of product, fresh white T-shirt clinging to his chest, it was the hottest thing I had ever seen in the flesh. “Waiting long?” 

All my life. 

“Nah, not at all, I said, trying to replicate his casual style. 

He chuckled at some internal joke. “You could have come in,” He said, heading toward his car. 

“Oh, no,” I said, trying not to sound too strident about my refusal. “I’m cool.” 

He looked at me over his shoulder and grinned. “Okay. This is mine.” He has stopped in front of a new midnight black Camaro that just oozed money. 

“Nice car,” I said as I eased into the passenger seat, terrified of somehow ruining the car. He tossed his bag into the backseat as he jumped behind the wheel. 

“Thanks. Got it for my last birthday,” He said cheerfully. Then, in a lower tone, he added, “My dad owes a dealership, so it’s a lease.” He turned the key, and the car roared like an angry sabretooth cat. It hit me that it was the perfect car for him. It was masculine, tough, and pretty all at the same time. Looking at him behind the steering wheel, looking over at me and grinning … it was like looking into the eyes of sex. “You okay?” he asked as I realised I was staring. 

I turned my head quickly as I nodded. “Yeah, just kinda tired, I guess.” I said as I faked the worst yawn in the history of faux bodily functions. 

“Hey, if you’re too tired for this we can do it another day,” He said, his voice dropping in concern. 

“No,” I answered way too fast and saw him smile as I looked back at him. I mean, I’m cool.” 

He shrugged and shifted the car into drive. “If you say so.” 

I was realising I was really bad at this. 

He lived in a house that exemplified everything that made him who he was. It was blindly normal in the middle of a good neighbourhood on the good side of town where nothing ever seemed to go wrong. The cars were all polished and gleaming, the lawns immaculately groomed, making me wonder if any of them were ever even played on. The suburban neighbourhood should have been littered with kids struggling to milk the last rays of sunshine out of the dying day, dads standing in the driveway, watering the grass and waving aimlessly, but there was no one. It looked like every place I had ever wanted to live, but as with most of the actual world, it was just a bit off from the image in my head. 

“Nice house,” I said as he pulled up in the driveway. There was another Camaro parked there, also black as midnight but twice as tricked out. 

He shrugged as he leaned back and grabbed his bag. “It’s okay, I guess.”

I wasn’t sure if I was seeing it correctly, but it seemed like his gait changed as he approached the front door. His steps became smaller, his shoulders slumped, and the bag on his shoulder seemed to have mass for the first time. It may have been my imagination, but there was a half second pause between when he reached up to the doorknob and when he turned it. As soon as he opened the door, a wave of noise hit us like a freight train. The sounds of a man and women screaming at each other echoed around the entrance hall of the house. The perfect marble white tiles on the floor scrubbed so clean they looked like no one had ever walked on them. Two sets of shows were set of to the side with a coat rack mounted above. 

“Take you shoes off,” Derek said in a whisper, which was completely unnecessary, since we could have walked in with a twenty-piece brass band and failed to be heard over the din of what I assumed were his parents fighting. “My mum is psycho about the carpets,” he explained with more than a small dose of apology in his tone. I step kicked my shoes off as I watched him slip off his converses and pushed them to the side. I found it amusing that in my entire life, I had never seen a teenage boy untie his sneakers before taking them off. We all evolved into creatures that somehow gained the ability to dance/shuffle our shoes off, taking the same amount of time and effort than stopping to untie them manually would. I tried not to watch as he slid his jacket off. The muscles that seemed to show through the sheer whiteness of his shirt were distracting, at the very least. I pushed my jacket over next to his and was struck how instantly different he seemed with his shoes and jacket off.  
He ceased being Derek Hale, star jock, lord and saviour of the local high school, and became another teenage boy. A flawless-looking, well-built teenage boy who never failed to turn people’s heads, but a teenage boy, nonetheless. 

“My rooms upstairs,” he said, sliding across the floor to the large staircase that seemingly led to the stars. “Let’s head up,” he said trying to keep his voice down.

The screaming stopped. 

“Derek?” a women’s voice called out. “Derek, is that you?” 

He visibly winced as his mother called out his name. 

A muffled male voice claimed that he hadn’t heard anything as his mother cried out again. “Derek, are you home?” 

“Dammit,” he muttered under his breath. He yelled back, “Yeah, it’s me!” He turned to the staircase and then decided to add, “I have a friend here, and we’re doing homework.” 

The sound of someone coming out of the kitchen and heading toward us seemed deafening in the echoing interior of the house. A man who looked like Derek, only twenty years older, sixty pounds heavier, and a shit ton angrier came barging into the foyer, two buttons undone, tie hanging loose, drink in a death grip. “What kind of friend?” he demanded, stopping in his tracks as he finally saw me. “Oh” was all he said. 

“This is….” There was a pause, and then Derek said, “My tutor. We’re studying Economics.” 

“Stiles,” I said under my breath, feeling myself shrink as I stood there. 

“Economics?” his dad said, not weaving or slurring in the slightest, but I had the distinct impression he was well on his way to being smashed. I had lived through more than a few drinking episodes with my dad, and I knew a drunken guy when I saw one. This man was dangerously intoxicated. He stood there, silent, for a long pause; I wasn’t sure if he was waiting for us to say something or had just lost his train of thought, but after a few seconds he said, “well, God knows you need some help” before he turned around and made his way back to the kitchen. “Just keep it down,” he added. 

Seconds later, he screamed, “I can talk to my fucking son if I want to, Talia!”

“Come on,” Derek said, climbing the stairs to his room. I followed, trying to remember how normal the house had looked from outside. 

There was a “Do Not Enter” street sign nailed to the front of the door. From the pockmarks and chipped paint, it looked like an actual sign pulled down from somewhere. Brad pushed the door open, stepped inside, and kept his hand on the door, making it obvious he wanted to slam it shut as soon as I crossed the threshold. His parents’ fight echoed upstairs as well, the acoustics of the house carrying the sounds to his room perfectly. “Come in,” he said impatiently.  
I hadn’t even realised I had paused until he said something. Every particle of my being telling me I should leave and leave now. I hated conflict of any kind and drunken conflict doubly so. Like a vampire invited into the room, I crossed the threshold, feeling a slight chill when the door closed behind me. Like everything else in his life, his room was everything mine wasn’t.  
Whereas the walls of mine were covered in a patchwork of images torn from magazines and a few tattered posters I had bought over the years, his looked like those of a poster gallery: two framed images of cars in motion; a movie poster with five teenagers leaning over each other, staring intently out; and a trio of sports athletes, each frozen in mid-victory. A wide dresser supported a parade of gold-coloured people all mounted on sports trophies. Enough to populate their own country, it seemed, each one another log on the fire of differences between us. I walked around, marvelling at the maleness of the entire space. A small bathroom was set off the bedroom. The vanity counter was full of hair products, cologne, and a smorgasbord of goods devised to ameliorate teenage male insecurity. The room was like an alien planet to me; there was nothing that was not jock, butch, or alpha-male guy in or around it. Even the Lacrosse ball-shaped alarm clock on the end table next to his bed shouted, “I’m a dude!” 

“So what do you think?” he asked, sitting down on the weight bench on the other side of the bed. The cloths draped over the bar indicated how much it was used.

“I love that movie.” I said, pointing at the poster above his bed. 

I had thought I had seen the full arsenal of his smiles since he had talked to me in the hallway, but as he nodded, he flashed me a new one that put all the other smiles to shame. It wasn’t until later that I realized that was the first time I ever saw him really smile. “So, which one are you?” 

Another popular question in high school, and though it seemed simple, it was a complex formula to figure out. You say jock, and you are trying to say you’re in better shape than everyone else. You say princess, you’re a bitch. If you say criminal, you think you’re cooler than you really are. If you say nerd, you think you’re smarter than everyone else. And if you say basket case, you are hiding something that everyone else will want to know. There was no right answer. 

“None of them, I guess,” I lied, putting my backpack down on his bed. “So you wanna get started?” 

Long seconds of nothing passed as I pulled my economics book out and began to flip through it. When I looked up at him, I could see his wry grin was back, that “I know more than you” smile. He shook his head and moved over to the bed. I moved over and knelt beside the bed, knowing that was as close as I dared get to him. “Whatever you say,” he said, lying down, his head towards the foot of the bed. “Where do we start?”

We started at Lincoln winning the presidency, moved through the Civil War, and rounded out with a little Reconstruction all in about ninety minutes. That was a lot of material to cover in half a semester, and in a cram session like this, it was impossible. At the end of the first hour, we both knew two things. One, there was way more that Derek didn’t know than he did; and two, neither of us had the concentration to go for more than an hour at the rate we had. In the last thirty minutes, things had begun to unravel, until he began asking random questions as he flipped though the book. Like my own personal sun, he was not only too radiant to look at directly, I also found myself more and more drawn into his orbit with each minute. He had decided to lie back on the bed, book in his hands as he leaned up against the pillows propped up against the headboard. This by itself was staggering, but his T-shirt had ridden up as he shifted around. The tan skin that had been exposed was just devastating to my ability to continue talking. The band of his white underwear was barely visible, and it was quickly becoming my own personal waterloo. 

“You know a lot about this stuff, don’t you?” he asked, the words barely penetrating the fog that had descended my brain as I saw the ridges of what had to be abs move with each breath. I had a stomach, a flat, skinny-ass stomach, but I had never once had abs. I wondered what it was like. 

And then I wondered what they felt like.

And then what they tasted like… 

“Stiles?” he said, waving a hand in front of my face. 

I jerked back as if burned, which was when I realized my legs had fallen asleep under me. 

I had been kneeling at the side of his bed for over an hour, and blood had long ceased to flow where it was supposed to and know was flowing where I definitely didn’t want it to be. I went over onto my side as I stifled a sound by sinking my teeth into my bottom lip. The pins and needles that exploded through my legs as I rocked back and forth were as excruciating as any torture I had imagined. Seconds later, Derek’s head popped over the side of the bed, his bangs falling down his face. 

“You okay?” 

My eyes were clenched shut as I nodded. “Peachy,” I said, half grunting. 

“You know, you could have sat up here with me.” He settled in, resting his hands on his arms as he watched me try not to cry. “It’s a big bed.” 

“I’m good.” I replied, which was the most I could say.

“Ooookay.” I could just hear that damn grin in his voice. “So what’s your deal, anyways?” 

My heart stopped. “Deal?” I asked, suddenly faced with far greater agony than anything my body could throw at me. 

“Yeah, deal,” he said casually, like we were long-lost friends just catching up instead of relative strangers on either side of the social strata that made up high school. “I mean, you’re not ugly.” 

This might have been the nicest thing anyone had ever said about the way I looked. 

He was right; I wasn’t ugly, at least not in the traditional sense. All of my damage was carefully concealed by a thin veneer of normalcy that, at times, felt like it failed to cover my entire body. Like a blanket two sizes too small, it could only cover one flaw at a time, leaving something else exposed to the general populace. If I could get past my crippling fear of talking in public, then my inability to avoid staring at people better-looking then me was revealed. If I covered that flaw by keeping my head down, then the glaring reality that I had absolutely no friends whatsoever flashed like a neon sign. I had learned that the best I could do was adopt a “duck and weave” strategy. I never stayed in one place long enough for someone to figure out my secret identity as the Hunchback of Foster High School, the discovery of which I just knew would be followed by torches and pitchforks.  
I knew how this movie ended, and it wasn’t with me walking across a football field, one hand raised in victory as Simple Minds played. 

“Um, thanks,” I said as I began to regain the ability to move my lower half. 

“no, I mean, you aren’t ugly, and no one has ever said anything bad about you, to my knowledge, at least.” I could see his legs crossed over his head, white socks just hovering there, somehow making him even more attractive. “So then why the Harpo Marx routine?” His green eyes bore down on me, and I felt my stomach plummet. 

And then my brain caught up with my ears. 

“People talk about me?” I asked, completely ignoring the auburn eyebrow that arched in surprise. “Who?” this was news to me. I mean, as a recipient of the Claude Rains scholarship for the Recognised Impaired, I assumed no one knew who I was. I had imagined myself invisible, wandering the halls unnoticed, a not-so-short-nor-fat Bilbo Baggins without the foot hair, darting from class to class without engaging as much as a sideways glance. Who are these people who not only know how I am but actually discuss me?

He shrugged and rolled over onto his back. “Lots of people, I guess. I asked around about you,” he added, reaching over to grab the Lacrosse ball-shaped alarm clock with one hand. “It was all good, I assure you.” He tossed it skywards with a casualness that I know would merit me a busted lip as gravity took hold of it and my own stunted reflexes tried to react. I have no idea why something so minor as tossing a ball could be so erotic, but it was. 

“You asked around about me?” My shock was so great that I found myself quickly descending into a bad Jerry Lewis impression as I simply stammered Derek’s own words back to him. 

Another toss. “Of course I did. You think I just invite anyone over to my house?” Toss. 

If blood had begun to flow back into my legs, it must have been draining from my face, because he glanced over his head at me, and whatever he saw shocked him enough that he forgot the falling piece of plastic that was hurtling towards his face. The sound of something striking flesh like a crack of thunder. A loud “Fuck!” followed as his hands covered his face. 

If my legs were still weak, I was unaware of it as I rushed towards him, real fear in my chest. Logically I understood the lacrosse ball-shaped alarm clock couldn’t do any real harm to him, but for the overwhelming burst of panic I felt, it might as well have been a gunshot wound. I hovered over him, sitting on the bed next to his shoulders. “Are you okay?” I asked like an idiot. Of course he wasn’t alright; he had just taken a line drive by a piece of plastic to his face. That was pretty far from okay. 

“Hit my God damned nose,” he said, the two huge paws that passed for his hands cupping his nose and mouth protectively. 

“Let me see,” I asked, Not quite daring to move his hands aside myself. 

“I’m okay,” he said, his hands not moving one iota. 

“Well then let me see,” I reasoned. 

Pause. “No, I’m fine,” He insisted. 

“Derek.” I sighed. “Move your hands.” 

A weaker and muted, “No,” followed by an almost whispered, “It hurts.”

“Move your hands,” I said, taking hold of his hands and trying to pry them off. 

“Stop it!” He exclaimed; his eyes wide.  
Let me see,” I said, bearing down on his fingers, which he would not open.  
“Let go!” he tried to demand, but it came out more whine than anything else.  
“Let me see your nose, you big baby.” I could see blood between his hands and knew his nose must be swelling. Finally, I stopped and looked down at him.  
“Seriously, Derek, let me see.” 

His hands refused to cooperate at first but then slowly moved aside. I hadn’t noticed at first when he grabbed my wrists. “How’s it look?” he asked as if inquiring about a missing limb. 

It looked bad. 

“It’s okay,” I lied, trying not to react to the sheer amount of blood that was gushing out of his nose and down his face. “Just put your head back here,” I said, pushing his head over the side of the bed so it was upside down. 

“Why?” he said, trying to sit up. 

“Lay back!” I said, pushing him back down with a hard shove to his chest. I’m not sure if it was the shove or the tone, but he seemed shocked into compliance and lay back down slowly. “Just stay there,” I said, as if addressing a wilful dog or stubborn child. I got up with the intention of finding a wet cloth in his bathroom when I noticed his hand still grasping my own. I looked down my arm to his and followed it back to his face as if I couldn’t quite grasp where this extra appendage had come from. 

“Is it okay?” he asked, this time with real emotion in his voice. 

“It will be,” I said, smiling. “Let me get a washcloth,” I asked, not willing to let go first. 

With great deliberateness, he released my hand and brought his own back to his side. I didn’t trust myself, so I quickly turned to his bathroom and began to search it for clean towels. Normally being this close to a place where I knew he showered would have made me curious at the very least, but we had wandered out of the places that made me clumsy and awkward and maneuvered into a place where I was very sure of myself. 

I had seen blood before, more than I cared to admit. 

The key to a swollen nose or lip was applying ice to it within the first few minutes, or it would swell at an alarming rate. If your nose and or mouth swelled past a certain point, then certain people would notice. If those certain people were teachers, then they tended to contact school officials. If school officials found out, they asked a lot of questions. If they asked a lot of questions, other people could end up angry. 

And then you would get hit again. 

I didn’t see any ice, but a cold, wet cloth was a good start. I bought a wet and dry towel back over to him. He had ben watching me upside down as he lay there. “you’ve done this before,” he said as a fact and not a question. 

“Hold still,” I said, sitting down and wiping the blood away. Without the gore, it looked better than I had originally thought, no bruise and no cut skin. Most likely he’d hit his nose just the right way. I cleaned his face completely with the wet washcloth and then put the dry one under his nose. “Hold it tight, it’s still bleeding.” 

His hand grabbed mine and held the towel there by holding my hand still. His eyes seemed to sparkle as he looked up at me. “You saved me,” he said, the wry grin evident even muffled by a towel. 

“It’s a bloody nose,” I said, enjoying the way his hand felt grasping mine. “Hardly think I saved your life.” 

“Hey, this is my money-maker,” he said, his free hand making a circular motion around his face. “You know how much trouble I’d be in if this got hurt?” 

Chuckling, I shook my head. “And how much money have you actually made with your money-maker?” 

“It’s a work in progress,” He said, his fingers moving down the length of my hand with a stroke. 

I pulled my hand back rapidly, rubbing where he had touched me as if I could dispel the effect his touch had that easily. “Well, you’re okay now,” I said, beginning to stand up. 

He sat up in a burst, scooting over until his face was level with mine. “I asked about you,” He said, moving his hands away from his nose. “Why?” I asked in a whisper. He had mesmerised me like a cobra mesmerised its prey. 

“Cause,” he said in the same whisper and leaned forward. “I wanted to know you.”

“You’re bleeding again,” my mouth said abruptly, completely against my will, I assure you. 

A few drops of blood seeped down his nose and over his lips as he pushed his mouth onto mine. 

My eyes closed and I tasted lust and blood as my tongue moved between his lips. I was shocked to find his moving back into my mouth. My arm slid around his back, and I could feel the hard muscle just beneath the thin cotton shirt that slid up as he leaned in. “Been wanting to do that all night,” he said, resting his forehead against mine. 

“Why?” my mouth asked, my eyes still closed.

I heard the chuckle move through his whole body as he pressed his mouth closer and whispered in my ear. “Because maybe I like you?” he said, his breath warm against my skin. 

“Maybe” I asked, not even aware I was holding my breath. 

“Maybe, with a strong chance of certainty,” he said, kissing the nape of my neck. 

“You like me?” he asked stupidly. 

“What do you think?” I asked, smiling like an idiot. 

“I think you need to get a bigger economics book if you’re gonna sport wood in the hallway from now on,” he said, his tongue moving against the side of my neck for a moment, making me shiver from head to toe. 

I could feel myself turning red as I took the compliment. “You noticed that,” I said rather than asked. 

“Oh yeah,” he growled more than said as he began to move back up towards my mouth. “You’re not ugly,” he repeated, this time a solid fact instead of an opinion. We kissed again, the taste of blood no longer there as his nose had completely stopped bleeding now. 

I thanked god for Automatic transmissions, because he held my hand all the way home. We had stopped kissing after hearing his parents’ fighting begin to scale up the stairway with greater and greater intensity. He had scrambled off the bed and fled into the bathroom as I tried to collect my books before his parents made their way to his door like a pair of fairy tale trolls. The voices passed by after a few seconds, but my chest was tight with the same familiar fear I had lived with each night my mother and her boyfriend -du-jour had fought. 

“You ready to go?” He asked suddenly, kneeling next to me, my eyes wide for a moment before I could regain my composure. I simply nodded and packed my stuff up. He took my hand out of my lap as soon as we cleared his driveway; his palms were callused from lacrosse and weights. My fingers traced the rough pads absently as he drove in silence. My hands were soft, disgustingly so compared to his, but his moved around and began to stroke the same pattern on mine.  
” Your hands are so smooth.” He said. I needed a second to realise it was a compliment. His touch felt incredible after what seemed like a lifetime of neglect and solitude. I squeezed his hand back, and his smile widened. He opened his mouth to say something and then closed it again as we continued to drive through the night. The silence was driving a wedge between us as he turned the corner to my house. I was so stuck in my own private wave of misery that the need to be ashamed of where I lived didn’t even register for once. We lived in a set of rundown apartments next to the local welfare tenants in a bad neighbourhood on the shady side of town – a place where you had a better chance of getting shot than borrowing milk. I wasn’t even aware we were in front of my building until he said, “I never knew anyone who lived here before.” 

Fuck. 

“Yeah, sorry about that,” I said, grabbing my backpack off the floor. “I can’t imagine your car is safe around here.” 

I tried to pull my hand back, but he refused to let it go, stopping me from leaving the car. I looked back and he said, “I’m not worried about my car.” 

And I understood where this was going, had known from the moment we walked out of his house, in fact. “Look Derek, I don’t expect you to talk to me tomorrow.”

He looked over at me, confused, and I amended my words with, “I know this isn’t for real.” I looked down at my feet, knowing there was no way I could get through this if I was looking at him. “I mean, you’re you and I’m me, and there is no way this is anything but…. Well, what it is. I don’t want you to think I am going to go nuts on you or bug you at school or whatever. I mean I get it, it’s cool.” He said nothing, which I took as a silent acceptance, so I continued. “I know how this movie ends. We don’t become fast friends on Monday morning and just forget everything that comes before. I’m not going to be a spaz and come up and try to talk to you in the hallway in front of your friends or anything. I’m not that guy.” I took a deep breath as I forced myself over the emotions that threatened to get caught in my throat. “So don’t worry, you’re safe.” 

He stared at me, unblinking. “Okay.” 

“I mean it.” And I did. 

In my mind I had already thought about liking him, fallen head over heels, been blown off, and then hounded him relentlessly before he finally confronted me, telling me angrily that it never happened, and he didn’t like me that way. This would be followed by long weeks of me listening to emo music and crying my eyes out thinking about killing myself. All in a matter of a seven-minute drive back to my house. “I’m not that type of guy.” Even though I was completely that type of guy. 

More not blinking, followed by, “Okay.” 

“I’m not stupid you know.” I said, fighting back tears. “I know you can’t go out with me.” And it was true; even if I woke up tomorrow possessing a vagina and breasts, there was no way we could date in any high school known to man. Besides the fact I would make a hideous-looking girl, there was no way a guy like him dates a person like me. 

“Okay.” He said again, confirming everything I already knew. 

“So don’t worry. I’m not going to be standing there wishing you would come over to my locker and say hi to me tomorrow.” I slipped my hand out from under his.  
“But I’ll help you study for the midterm.” 

A good ten seconds now, and then he sighed. The car was too dark for me to see his face completely, but from what is saw he didn’t look happy. “Thanks.” 

I clicked open the door. “And you don’t have to kiss me for me to do it.” Not waiting for a response, I opened the door and got out as fast as I could. I slammed the door and practically sprinted for my door like I was a blonde cheerleader being chased by the monster of the week. My key felt like it was purposely dodging the keyhole as the door began to blur from the stinging tears in my eyes. The door flew open and my dad stood there, his words slurring as he asked, “Where the fuck have you …” And then he saw Derek’s car pull off and into the night. “Who do you know that owns a car like that?” 

I pushed past him, knowing that in the middle of his date with Jack Daniels that he would never notice how upset I was. The sound of my door slamming shut was as familiar as an alarm clock was in other houses. I tried not to throw myself on the bed and bury my head in a pillow like a twelve-year-old girl. I tried, but I know I failed pretty badly. 

  
 

As I arrived at school, I prayed I wouldn’t see him while looking everywhere trying to see him. I moved quickly to my locker in hopes that I could get to first period without being seen, simultaneously hoping he could find me before first period. This schism continued as I crept further and further down the hall. Part of me wanted so badly never to see him again because it would remind me of the fifteen-minute relationship I seemed to have imagined. The other part of me wanted to see him so much it was all I could think about. Somehow I had discovered a whole new level of hell. If you had asked me the day before whether high school could get any worse, I would have bet you everything I had that I had sunk to the lowest I could get. Yet here I was, at a whole new sublevel I had never imagined. No one talked to me, no one glanced at me, the same as yesterday, same as everyday. Yet today, being ignored hurt on a frequency so high that my self-imposed walls were starting to crack. I wished that my locker were some kind of Narnian-type structure so I could just climb inside and never be seen again. It wasn’t fair to go so long unnoticed, then to get notice by what in my mind was the centre of the universe, and then to metaphorically gnaw my own arm off to avoid being caught in a no-win situation all within twenty-four hours.  
If I had been a baby, concerned parents would have said I had had a long day and needed a nap. That wasn’t wholly true. What I needed I would never get. I slammed my locker shut, wishing I could channel all my pent-up sorrow and frustration into one physical blow, causing the metal door to fly off and ricochet down the hall, cutting nameless people in half, leaving them begging on the floor for a quick death. Crying out to an end to the misery called life. Because I wanted them to feel just like I did right now. But because I had not been irradiated with gamma rays or bitten by a radioactive spider, all the locker did was slam shut without the least fanfare. That just pissed me off even more, and I turned toward first period – and I froze in place. 

He was standing there, that small grin on his face. He had his backpack on one shoulder, his letterman jacket open to the waist, and his arms were crossed across his chest. He was leaning against the wall waiting for me to notice him. There was laughter in his eyes, which seemed to look straight through me, bathing me in warmth that, until that moment, I hadn’t realized I missed. I felt my mouth go dry as my heart literally skipped a beat. We stood there for what seemed like an eternity as my mind locked up. I had no idea what to say. I wanted to turn and run. I wanted to throw my arms around his and just kiss him. I wanted to melt to the floor and just fade away. I wanted to do all of that and not say anything to shatter the moment. 

And then he opened his mouth and, with a huge grin, said, “Hi.” 

I don’t remember the moment I knew I was broken… but I do recall when I started to understand that it might be okay. It was the moment I fell in love with the boy with the green eyes. 

  
 

I must have stood there in the hallway in front of my locker for years as my mind struggled to decipher what my eyes were seeing. It had to be a mirage, an illusion of some sort created by my mind to show me what my heart truly desired. There was no way Derek was leaning up against the wall, grin on his face, just daring me to say something. I was frozen between wanting to pass my hand through him to prove he wasn’t actually there and making a move on the off chance he might vanish. Absolutely nothing came out of my mouth. Part of me was sure that this was the very moment my mind had snapped under the pressure of trying to be normal. That what little sanity I had squirreled away for a rainy day had finally gone bad, leaving me empty-handed and quietly going insane. Another part of my brain wondered what in the hell he was doing standing there after what I said the night before. 

“You keep staring and people will think you have a crush on me,” he said in a low enough tone that only I could hear. 

That was enough to break me out of my stupor and finally react. I grabbed his arm and pulled him into the first empty classroom I could find, slamming the door behind us. Sounding angrier than I actually was, I demanded more than asked. “What are you doing?” 

His grin didn’t diminish, but the sparkle seemed to dim slightly as he answered. “I was saying good morning – spaz much?’

My backpack slid of my shoulder as I collapsed back into a desk. “I told you I was okay with this last night.” I said, sighing, wondering how exactly something that seemed so incredible in my mind could be so sucky in actuality. 

“Yeah, you said a lot last night.” His grin vanished. “Now it’s my turn.” He said, moving toward me and leaning forward, fists on the desk. “Look Stiles, I have no idea what this is, and I am not going to pretend I do, but I can tell you this. I didn’t kiss you as some kind of payment for tutoring me.” His voice was obviously angry, but I wasn’t feeling nervous or apprehensive as all. “I’m not sure where that came from but let me clear it up: you aren’t some kind of Economics whore to me.” 

The phrase ‘Economics whore,’ by the way, is forever ingrained in my memory. 

“You think you know me. Thrust me when I say no one knows who the hell I am. Everyone thinks I’m…” He paused as he realised no matter what words came next, he was going to sound like a douche bag. He knew he was what passed for a celebrity at our school, most likely our entire town. Mind you, not ‘celebrity’ as defined by Paris Hilton or anyone on Jersey Shore, but celebrity, nonetheless. So if he said anything less than that, he was lying through his insanely white and perfectly straight teeth. 

No one in high school ever admitted how popular they were unless they were extremely drunk or just a total bitch. Everyone laboured under the impression that they were in some way a few notches below the top of the totem pole no matter who they were. It was only through other people’s eyes that someone became the most popular kid in the world or the prettiest girl that ever walked these halls, so him saying anything that sounded like ‘I’m popular’ now would violate every single social law of the high school jungle. 

Instead he just shook his head and said. “Everyone thinks I am this person – everyone but me.” He looked up at mem and it was the first time I had an inkling that no matter where someone is on the totem pole, there was always someone pushing down from higher above. “I’m broken, Stiles, I’m broken inside…” His voice dropped to almost a whisper. “And I don’t know what to do about it. I think he might have said something after that, and I might have said something back, but whatever it was, it wasn’t important, because I had finally found something I didn’t think existed. I must have been silent for a while, because he looked at me with concerned eyes and asked. “Stiles?” 

I looked up at him and smiled, because I had just figured out something seriously important. I had found another person to be with. I wasn’t sure where Brad and I were, but I knew it was somewhere new. The bell interrupted and reminded us once more that we did indeed live in the real world, where things like linear time and consequences lived. Linear time existed because first period started at the same time every morning, and no matter how important this talk was, time was not going to change itself around. Consequences existed in that if we missed class, we were both going to be in a crapload more trouble than either of us wanted to court at that point in our young lives. So with great reluctance we parted ways, vowing we would talk about everything later. 

‘Later’ being a time that didn’t have a really precise definition. 

Later, it turned out, wasn’t at lunch. As a social shut-in and coming from a household that didn’t garner an excess amount of income. I brought my own lunch every day. This meant I never had to deal with such arduous tasks as standing in line, risking the chance of actually interacting with other people, or finding some place to sit down. This saved me from the horrific experience of having people look me in the face and tell me to fuck off. Instead of suffering through that, I wandered the quad. I usually opted to retreat to the safety of the band hall steps, where I could rummage through my paper bag and retrieve the least distracting thing I’d thrown in that morning to consume. The steps were also close to what was described by people as the Round Table. The name was ironic, since it was neither round nor a table but a long wooden bench with seats on either side of it. The name from the fact that only the most popular of people ever sat there, the prom kings and queens, the elite of the elite of Foster High. And though everyone at the table was usually called royalty in the most sarcastic of tones, it wasn’t a table that just anyone walked up to, much less sat down at.  
In retrospect, I have to plead temporary insanity.  
Normally there was a better chance I would strip naked, roll around in broken glass, and then cover the wounds with Tabasco sauce than that I would approach the Round Table. However, whatever I possessed in my brain that passed for common sense had left for the day and hadn’t taped a ‘will return by this time’ sign hanging on the door. I had my brown bag clenched tightly as I walked towards the table. There wasn’t even an average-looking person lounging around it. The least attractive person was a guy named Jackson Whittmore, a short and stocky guy who was known more for his ability on the Lacrosse field than his looks. Even he was still better looking than most. The only thing that made Jackson less attractive than everyone else was that he was a total dick. If you close your eyes and imagine every single movie bully you’ve ever seen pushing nerds, throwing people in garbage cans, and shoving geeks into lockers, then you have a pretty good impression of what Jackson was like to be around. I hadn’t noticed Jackson though, because all I saw was Derek. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t standing there one leg on the bench, as wind blew through his hair and an 80’s rock anthem played softly in the background, but that was how I saw him. He was saying something that must have been engaging, since the circle of people who surrounded him seemed spellbound by what was coming out of his mouth. I understood that sentiment all too well. 

I got within nine steps to the table before I heard a voice call out, “Hey, queerbait, where the hell you think you’re going?” 

There wasn’t even a tiny little doubt in my mind as to whom those words were directed at. 

As is the case in any High School or prison on earth, there is nothing more desirable to the general populace than free drama. There is s pack mentality that exists in those places that can only be rivalled by a group of people watching Christians being fed to lions. They want blood and lots of it. My head snapped up to see Jackson standing in front of me, blocking my way to the table like a rude and abusive bouncer stopping me from entering a nightclub. I looked past him and saw the Table had frozen in mid-sentence to look at me as well. Derek’s eyes grew wide as we made eye contact and he realized what I must have been attempting. I had to give him credit; he didn’t shake his head or try to wave me off, since that would have given him away as well. Instead, his face was carved out of marble as Jackson knocked the lunch bag out of my hands. 

“I asked where the fuck you think you’re going?” he said, his body drawing in close to mine. I winced as anyone with a badger in his face would. Not a good move, as anyone knows. In the dog-eat-dog world of high school, the paramount rule is ‘never show fear.’ “Oh! What’s wrong bitch?” he taunted, his chest bumping mine now, pushing me back a few stumbling steps, since he had at least forty pounds on me. “Not used to having a real man up in your face?” 

To this day I don’t know if it was fear, anger, or just straight-up loathing that made me respond with, “Why? Have you seen a real mana round here?” If it had been a movie, you would have heard the record scratching sound effect as the assembled crowd processed what I had said. And then came the laughter. Part of me felt horrible for Jackson, because there is no worse fate than being surrounded by people laughing maliciously at you. Seeing someone, no matter who they may be, eaten alive in public is just plain disgusting. From the look on Jacksons face, this was the first time it had happened to him; the abject shock he displayed made starring at him akin to staring down a corpse. He looked to his left and right verifying that everyone was, indeed, laughing at him. It was not a localised catastrophe involving just those people closest to us. I suppose I should have felt the flush of victory at that moment as the bully was hoisted by his own petard, but to be honest all I felt was sick to my stomach at the thought of the very some thing happening to me. 

And then he hit me. 

One second I felt the blood race to my face as I realized I was inadvertently the centre of attention, and the next I was on the ground. My right hand felt as if it had been dragged across broken glass as it hit the pavement hard; my left was clutching my chest where he had punched me. The look on my face must have trumped Kelly’s by a country mile, as the laughter got louder, and I realised its focus had shifted to me. I only knew two things. One, this was the worst moment of my life. And two, this was actually just the worst moment of my life so far.  
“How’s that for a real man, you fucking fag – “He had begun to taunt as he stood there over me when his head snapped suddenly to the left, the sound of flesh hitting flesh echoing like a gunshot off the grassy knoll. The laughter had stopped as Jackson stumbled sideways and finally crashed like some great douche bag tree. I looked up and saw Derek standing over him, fists clenched, face etched with fury. He looked like an angry god fuming, deciding his vengeance. I looked around and saw people with theirs hands over their mouths trying to cover their delight at the new violence lest they be pulled into it. Everyone loved seeing someone get their ass kicked. No one wanted it to be them. 

Jackson started to rise to his knees. Derek growled. “Stay down there.” It wasn’t a request. It wasn’t a suggestion. It was obviously a command, and he expected it to be followed. Jackson pause, his head still down as drops of blood pooled beneath his face. “You think it’s funny going around picking on people smaller than you, Jackson?” Again, not a question. “Well, I’m smaller than you.” Derek knelt down and locked eyes with him. “Pick on me.” 

It was true that Derek was a few inches shorter than Jackson, but only in physical height. Even though the two of them were both high school celebrities, it was only by the gift of sport that Jackson was able to share the same space with him. Jackson’s eyes watered as Derek thrust his face closer to him, just as Jackson had done to me. His abject fear was tangible as no on in the quad dared to breathe.  
“Come on big guy,” Derek said casually, as if they were just discussing a sports score or the weather. “Pick. On. Me.” 

Jackson shook his head, blood from his nose and lip spraying out as he babbler. “I didn’t mean anything by it, Derek!” His voice cracked, and it must have been obvious even to his own ears that he sounded like a little bitch. He swallowed and tried to control his tone. “I mean, I was just having a little fun…” And he could instantly tell that was the wrong thing to say. 

“Fun?” Derek asked as his eyes flashed with rage. I had never seen anyone that angry this close up before unless their anger was directed at me. He grabbed the front of Jackson’s shirt and hauled him to his feet as if he weighed nothing. No one Jackson’s size could be used to being manhandled like that, and from the way his feet refused to steady themselves under him, he wasn’t. Derek pushed him towards where I still sat on the ground, no doubt in the same level of stupor as the rest of the crowd. “Let’s have some fun then.” Derek hissed harshly in Jackson’s ear from behind. “Look at him and apologise.” 

I felt my throat go dry as Jackson looked down at me and I became the totality of his universe for the next few minutes. I know people were staring, I knew I should get up and run, but I couldn’t. Instead I just sit there like a lump, speechless.  
In a voice barely above a mumble, he said, “I’m sorry.” 

Derek’s knee came up into the small of Jackson’s back, making him bark out in what was probably more shock than actual pain. “I said apologise.” He ordered through gritted teeth. “Not just say sorry like a fucking girl. Try it like a man.” Small pause. “For once."

I saw Jackson’s face redden in both anger and embarrassment as a few people in the back laughed. As he looked at me again, I saw the coldness in his eyes, and my chest tightened. I could tell this was not the end. This was not even the middle. As he said in a monotone voice. “I apologise for knocking you down and being a dick.” I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt. This was just the beginning.

“It’s okay.” I said in what had to be just louder than a squeak. 

“And I’m a fucking tool.” Derek said softly as he shook him. 

“And I’m a tool!” Jackson said, almost shouting. 

“And I have a little dick and it makes me do crazy things!” 

Jackson’s head sagged down, and in the most defeated voice I have ever heard another human being use, he echoed, “And I have a little dick and it makes me do crazy things.” 

The crowd exploded in howls of amusement as Derek pushed Jackson to the side. He fell hard, his hands scuffing on the pavement as mine had. I was horrified, not just by the attention, but by the knowledge that Derek had just made the whole mess a million times worse than before. He took a step toward me and held out his hand. “Come on,” He said to me in a low, kind voice. “Let me help you up.”  
I looked up at him in shock for several second before I pushed myself to my feet, trying not to wince as my hand screamed in protest. I stopped there for a moment, inches away from Derek’s face. His eyes belonged to a stranger, and I realised I didn’t know him at all. I turned and pushed my way through the crowd, praying that if I was going to start bawling, no one would notice until I was past them. I know he wanted to follow me, but there was no earthly reason why someone like him would run after someone like me. And for once I was happy for that. There was nothing left to do but to flee the scene. I had just received more attention in the last five minutes than I had in the entirety of my time in school. Though everyone has Ferris Bueller-like dreams where they jump up and sing ‘Twist and Shout’ in front of thousands, the reality of having all those people looking at you is a completely different situation. I was mortified beyond belief, and the thought of going back to school ever again was daunting. I ran home.  
The joy of having an alcoholic party father was that if you came barging through the doors hours before school was out, you didn’t receive so much as a raised eyebrow in response. I pushed the door to my bedroom open and froze in place when I saw Derek sitting on my bed, thumbing through a well-worn copy of The outsiders. He looked over with a concerned look on his face. “Hey.” 

“You have a friend here!” My dad called from the living room. 

Sighing, I closed the door as I dropped my backpack on the floor. There was nowhere in the small room to sit other than the bed, and there was no way in gay hell I was going to sit next to him near a bed again. Instead I leaned up against the far wall and tried to look as intimidating as I could. “How did you get here before me?” I asked, my confusion interrupting my anger. 

He tossed thee book back to the ground. “I have a car, what did you expect?”  
Dammit. 

“So what do you want?” I asked, knowing whatever anger I had hoped to express in my voice was lost after such an idiotic question. 

“How’s your hand?” he asked, looking at the way I was clutching it. 

“Fine,” I said with clipped annoyance. “What do you want?” 

He paused eyes boring into me with an intensity that, frankly, I wasn’t prepared for. “Are you pissed at me?” 

“What do you think?” I shot back. 

“I think that if you’re pissed, I’m not sure why.” In fact, he sounded angrier than I ever was, for some reason. 

“You’re pissed at me?” I blurted out as my mind struggled to connect the dots. 

He dropped his head, breaking eye contact for a moment as he muttered to the ground. “Well, I’m not filled with love at the moment.” 

The sarcasm was like a blade to me for some reason. My indignation and frustration evaporated under the sudden and overwhelming urge to apologize to him. I had no idea what I should apologize for, but the desire remained nonetheless. Finally I was able to ask. “What did I do?” 

He looked back up and our eyes met. “What in the world made you walk towards the Table?” 

Normally I would have been disgusted by the way his voice emphasized its important, somehow changing it from a table to the Table, but I was literally shocked by his question. “What?” I sputtered as my mental gears ground themselves to a standstill while I tried to process his words. 

“Oh, come on.” He said, standing up suddenly, reminding me again of our physical differences. It was daunting me to have him here in such a familiar and enclosed space. My bedroom was barely large enough for me and my issues, but with an angered Derek standing not three feet away from me, it was positively microscopic. You were making a beeline straight towards it, and you know it. What possessed you to do something that stupid?” 

And my mind finally found a gear. “Excuse me?” I said, more of a demand than a question. If he had been any more shocked by the change in my demeanour, his jaw would have hit the floor as I continued to berate him, uncaring whether I upset him or not. “Who in the fuck do you guys think you are, anyways?” I took a step toward him and felt far too much enjoyment at seeing him stumble a half step back. “Do you honestly think people need permission to get near ‘you’ people.” I saw his face blanch as my voice conveyed seventeen years of disdain when I snarled. “I get you guys are popular, but I know you did not come all the way to my house to tell me I’m not good enough to walk towards a fucking table.” Another step, and he fell back onto my bed with a half yelp. “Because I thought at the very least you and I might be two people that could at least talk without me asking for diplomatic immunity first!” 

The look on his face gave me a clue as to how I must have looked when he confronted Jackson: he just gaped at me, wide-eyed. 

“I’m a human being, Derek, and I can walk up to any fucking table I want to.” I stood over him, my breath coming quickly as my heart pounded from the adrenaline. Even with him flat on my bed I held no illusions that he wasn’t more physically imposing than I was. But a crack had snapped open in that bravado he wore as a set of armor. And what I saw underneath was as alluring as it was intoxicating. 

I want to say it was the thrill of the moment. I want to blame the moment on his vulnerability. I’d love to blame it on a half a dozen different things, but the honest to god truth was I did what I did because I knew we were going to crash, and I didn’t want to go out like that. 

I fell on top of him, his hands moving to my waist automatically as our hips met. My mouth moved over his like an animal staking its claim. I bit his bottom lip as I pulled away. I felt his hands grip me and pull me closer as I kissed my way to the side of his face and down his neck. I could hear the whispered ‘oh god!’ as I felt the tendons clench between my teeth, the unmistakable rush of domination filling my senses. Feeling his chest move against mine as I nibbled the muscles where his neck met his shoulder and the pressure of his crotch grinding upward as I licked my way back up to his ear was like the first hit of a drug. My head was swimming as I pulled his head to the side, savagely plunging my tongue into his ear. His gasp twisted tighter, into a near squeal, as his entire body reacted as if touched by a live wire. I tried not to focus on the fact that I had one of the most popular jocks in the school writhing under me and just enjoy the physicality of it, but I had to admit that who he was made it as enjoyable as what we were doing. I bit lightly at his lobe as I felt him take a halting breath. In the lowest of voices, I whispered, “You like that?” 

He nodded quickly, and I could tell he didn’t trust his voice right then. I could feel his hardness under me, straining at the confines of his jeans, pressing up against my own hard dick. There was no doubting how turned on we were at the moment, as I felt him moving his hips so that he rubbed against me again and again. I may have been skinny, but I wasn’t lacking in every department that made up a man. From what I could feel, neither was he. It was obvious from just one of our bulges that we were above average when compared to other boys. Pressed together, their hardness was more uncomfortable than pleasing with our jeans on. I felt his hand lift from my hip to snake between us, adjusting the direction of his dick, which gave him an excuse to move his hand over the bulge in mine. My entire body shivered as I felt him squeeze harder. His eyes got bigger for a moment in surprise, and then the smile spread across his mouth. “Not such a mouse after all?” he asked as he squeezed the head softly. 

I closed my eyes in ecstasy as my forehead fell to his chest. 

His voice purred in my ear as he echoed my own question. “You like that?” 

I nodded, trying not to groan as he began to move his hand a up and down my length. 

“Yeah, my little nerd is hung like a mule.” 

I looked up at him, momentarily hurt by the phrase, but when I saw the amusement in his eyes, I felt myself smiling. 

“God damn,” He said, rubbing harder. “That is hot.” 

I moved my hand over his and found that we were closer in length than I had thought, though he seemed thicker by the mound of flesh I felt. “You’re hot,” I said, pressing my hand over him, beginning to rub. I felt him buck up into my touch as his eyes clenched in the moment. I was entranced by the way he bit his lower lip, his tongue snaking out for a brief moment as I began to rub harder and faster. His hand stopped moving when felt his cock twitch under my ministrations. I went back to his ear, probing around the sensitive skin as I put two fingers to his swollen head. I could feel the dampness of the material as his cock began to react more and more to the friction. “You want that?” I whispered between licks, the feeling of him moaning under me, his body unable to resist me, like nothing I had ever felt before. 

“Oh God Stiles.” He murmured, his voice trailing off into incoherent sounds. 

“You gonna shoot for me?” I asked as I felt him grind upward harder and harder into me. “My jock gonna show me how he cums?” 

“Oh Jesus!” he cried as his hips stopped moving. 

I could feel his rod pulsing as he exploded. The dampness grew as he jerked in place, a spasm passing through his body with each wave of his orgasm. I kissed him as he shot, his tongue thanking me in ways language would never have been able to replicate. His rams had pressed against my waist, pulling me against him as his hips literally bucked off the bed in response. He was panting like a dog as he held me close to him, his body shaking with each little earthquake his member produced. His hands slid up my back, pulling me down into an embrace as he settled back onto the bed. I surrendered into him, my own cock still rigid with unreleased tension. 

After a few seconds he said in an amused tone, “Your jock?” 

I didn’t look up as I traced a circle around one of his nipples through his T-shirt. “Your nerd? At least jock is a compliment.” 

He moved my face up as he kissed me again. “I said hung nerd, that’s different.”  
I had to admit it was. 

He moved his leg, pressing it up against my hard-on. “What about you?”

“I’m good.” I said, realizing how weak that sounded. 

“I know.” He pushed me off of him, tossing me onto my back with one move. “That wasn’t what I meant.” His grin as he pushed my legs apart was criminal. With agonising slowness, he began to pop the buttons on my s open. I could feel my body respond as he got closer and closer to opening my jeans. He could feel me twitch under his hands and chuckled. “someone wants to come out and play.”  
This was the exact moment my dad chose to pound on the door. “Leaving!” He bellowed. “Back later tonight.” 

I’m not sure if I kicked him away or if Derek threw himself away from me, but I do know that if there was a world record for buttoning a pair of s and jumping up while smoothing out your hair, I broke it at that very moment. I could literally feel my heart pounding as if threatening to detonate my rib cage from within like an action movie explosion. I glared at the tip of my member angrily, blaming it for what was obviously going to be death by embarrassment once my father saw me with a hard-on. Neither one of us even drew a breath until we heard the front door slam shut. 

I collapsed back onto the bed with an audible sigh while Derek slumped back against the far wall. “Oh my God.” He half moaned. 

“I think I just had a stroke,” I said, pulling a pillow over my face. 

There was a pause before the bed shifted and I felt a weight over me. The pillow moved aside, and his face filled my vision. “Well, I can tell there is some swelling.” His grin made the innocent phrase so dirty that I felt my body react despite my state of terror. 

“You’re crazy.” I said, not pushing him off me. 

“I might be a little impaired.” He said, drawing closer, his lips barely ghosting over mine. 

“What if he comes back?” I asked, not able to draw a full breath from anticipation.

“I jump again.” He said as his lips touched mine. 

And the sound of the front door opening was like a gunshot going off next to us. This time I did push him off of me. The sound of him hitting the far wall was a pretty solid thud. After a second, my door opened, and my dad poked his head in. “You might want to move your car,” He said, looking at Derek. “There are a couple of guys across the parking lot eyeing it pretty hard.” 

He looked like a puppet being jerked up by his strings, he went from sitting to standing so fast. One hand was digging in his pocket as he looked over at me. 

“We okay?” 

I nodded. 

“Call me tonight,” He said, rushing past my dad and out the door. 

She watched him leave and looked back at me. I felt myself internally cringe as he focused on me. “Nice boy.” 

I nodded again. 

His gaze felt like a slow-moving drill boring into my skull as we stared at each other for a moment. I could see questions like ‘so what’s he doing with you?’ and ‘what’s wrong with him?’ brewing in his mind, but he had nothing to complain about yet, so he didn’t have a toehold to use as a starting point. 

Yet. 

His gaze told me I was on report with him. He knew something was up, and he was going to find out what it was. “Be back later.” He said, finally closing my door and leaving. 

Five minutes later, I let out the mental breath I had been holding since I had first walked in and seen him sitting on my bed. 

“I am so dead.” I said to no one. 

I could still feel him under me even though he was gone. I could still taste him in my mouth even though hours had passed since he had left. Like an afterimage from looking at the sun, everywhere I looked, all I saw was him. I wandered around the house dazed. The fact that dad was not there, coupled with the fact I had just made out with a real boy on my bed, made me feel the closest to drunk I’d been in all my seventeen years. I tried to throw a leash on my mind as it began to wander over the details of what had just happened. I new it was dangerous territory, and in my experience, nothing good ever came from straying down that path. Every time I had dared to hope for something in my life, it seemed that fate, like a small angry child, went out of the way to make sure I not only didn’t get it but was instead rewarded with exact opposite. In my mind, hope was an illusory as unicorns and leprechauns, so when I felt my thoughts move from what was to what could be, I tried to stop them. 

But it was too late. 

I could see us, secret lovers behind everyone’s back, every day pretending to be nothing but acquaintances, every night, so much more. I envisioned us holding hands in the darkness of a movie theatre, his leg pressing up against mine, our bodies silently passing messages to each other. In the distant future I could see us sitting together, both of us stuffed into the oversized chair we owned, watching a movie and sharing a bowl of popcorn. I could feel the warmth of him as I leaned into him, completely ignoring the movie. I wondered if we could keep it hidden for long. I mean, eyes wander, smiles linger. Only a fool would not be able to see what was going on between us. His being one of the most popular guys at school might make it less shocking than I was thinking it would be. He could come by and pick me up for school, I’d see him between classes, and we could have lunch…. 

“Sonofabitch!” I said, jumping up from my bed. 

It had taken me almost three hours to remember that we never actually finished the conversation we had started. The shock and humiliation of the afternoon came rushing back in an instant, and my previously dispelled anger suddenly reappeared. Since there was no way my family could ever afford a cell phone, I was forced to grab our old house phone and jab Brad’s number into the receiver, as if it had been complicit in Jackson’s attack. 

Derek picked up on the third ring. “Hey, I was wondering if you were going to call.” He said, the smile evident in his voice. 

“You never answered me.” I said, trying my best to keep his grin from infecting my own face. 

“About?” He asked, backpedalling a bit. 

“About me being a human being.” I said, the anger seeping into my voice slowly.

“I agree that you’re a human being.” He said, obviously thinking this was some part of a joke. 

“I’m serious.” 

“So am I.” He said, his voice becoming more serious. “You are a human being.”  
After a beat, he added. “Unless you’re a vampire or a werewolf. That’d be weird. You’re not a vampire or a werewolf right?”

“I’m serious.” I said again, my patience fading. 

“So am I!” He said, obviously having fun with this. “On one hand, I’m into necrophilia, and on the other, I’m into bestiality. I mean, either way I’m a sick puppy. I mean, come one!” 

“Derek.” I said, interrupting his monologue. 

“Seriously, what is wrong with those movies. I mean, they are good looking dudes, but at the end of the day, you’re dating a dead guy or a dog, and who wants that?” 

“ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION!” I roared into the phone. 

There was a silence for agonizing seconds, and then I could hear his voice, filled with as much emotion as any computer. “What was the question?”

Fair point. I hadn’t actually asked anything since that afternoon. “Do you think I need to ask permission to approach your table?” 

The shock in his voice was so genuine that I felt like a complete ass. “Is that what you’re upset about?” 

“You think I shouldn’t be?” I shot back, feeling more upset than angry. 

He was quiet for so long I thought for a moment he had hung up. I wanted to ask if he was there, but we were two teenage boys in a standoff, which meant we were not going to just talk about what was wrong but play some stupid game of emotional chicken with each other instead. Finally I heard his voice say, with a coldness that startled me, “I’m coming over.” And he hung up. 

“Derek?” I asked, hoping that maybe I had gained the ability to jump back in time five seconds and stop him from hanging up and somehow avert this whole train wreck. But it didn’t happen. It took him less than fifteen minutes to knock on my door. I considered just turning off the lights and pretending I wasn’t home, but since I wasn’t in the middle of a bad sitcom, the odds of it working were pretty slim. Instead, I took a deep breath and forced myself not to shrink away as I normally did when confronted with conflict. 

The door was barely open when he charged in, sounding like he was continuing a conversation we were having just on the other side of the door. Obviously furious, he snapped. “Is that what you think of me?” while coming to a stop in the middle of the living room. 

I closed the door and locked it on the off chance my dad was going to make another impromptu appearance. The lock would as least give us a few seconds warning this time. “Like what?” I asked back. 

“Oh, come one. I already tried to pretend I didn’t know what we were talking about. Now your gonna take a turn at it?” 

I paused for a moment, not sure how to proceed. This was all too familiar to me, and that was throwing off what I was sure was righteous indignation. “I don’t –“ I blurted. “I mean I didn’t – “ 

“You think I am seriously someone who would think other people are beneath me?” He was demanding answers now, and his tone and manner were entering dangerous territory as far as my mind was concerned. He was starting to sound like my dad. 

“That isn’t what I said.” I chocked, trying to bite back the bitter metallic taste that filled my mouth. 

“Then what did you say?” He asked, taking a step forward. “Come one, Stiles, what do you really think of me?” I held my ground the best I could, but the sheer power of his anger coupled with his frame made it an intimidating task. “Come one Stiles! What kind of jock douche bag am I?” 

“Derek, I-“ I started to say under my breath. 

“What?” He took the final step towards me. 

I can’t hear you.” He said as he reached out toward me. 

I am sure it was an innocent gesture. I’m sure he probably meant to just make me look up at him so at the very least he could see my lips move. Maybe he was trying to reassure me by placing a hand on my shoulder. I’m sure there were half a million reasons he could have made a move like that, but my mind only knew one. I drew back and flinched. Not the flinch of someone who was scared or concerned. Not the flinch of someone who was nervous and caught by surprise. And certainly not the flinch of someone who was supposed to be having a heated discussion with the guy he had been making out with mere hours before. It was the flinch of someone who was used to being hit. He froze instantly. His entire body looked carved out of wax as his expression morphed from anger to horrified shock, while mine dropped into a panicked cringe of abject terror. The second I did it, I regretted it. I cursed as I took a few stumbling steps away from him as I tried to compose myself internally. 

“Stiles,” He said in a voice barely above a whisper. “I wasn’t going to – “ 

“I know.” I said abruptly, his concern stinging worse than the panic. “I know.” I repeated more softly as I felt my eyes begin to sting. My legs gave out under me as I wilted to the floor, more a move of surrender than an actual fall. He ran towards me, his arms encircling me as I tried to draw away. Derek’s sympathy was worse than his anger, and I cursed myself for being so fucking weak. He pulled me close as the dam broke and the sorrow filled sobs exploded. He ran his fingers through my hair as he tried to soothe me. I heard him say, his voice devoid of emotion again. “I know, I know.” Then a few seconds, sorrow began to saturate his words. “My dad hits me too.” 

And then we began to cry together. 

It must have been more than twenty minutes before we regained enough composure to make it off the living room floor and to my bed. Though he was physically larger than I was, he clutched me like a drowning man clutches an overturned lifeboat. 

“I sounded like him.” He said in a voice so withdrawn that it was like nails on a chalkboard. “I sounded just like my dad when he yells at my mum.” A silent, half-swallowed sob racked his whole body, and I felt it reverberate through my own, a sympathetic pain that resonated from having been treated the same all my life. It was as if, for that moment, we were one person in pain, both of us sharing the other’s pain somehow. I squeezed him tight in commiseration, reassuring my imagination he was a real person and not a madness-induced hallucination. 

“It’s okay.” I said, sounding as lame as any other human being ever has. 

He looked up at me, his eyes red, watery sobs of anguish. “No its not. I don’t want to be like him Stiles. I never want to be him.” His head sank into my chest and his words trailed off. I knew that feeling well. 

“You’re not like him at all.” I lied, knowing what he needed to hear. I knew it because I had wanted someone to say it to me most of my life – a proclamation that I was more than the sum of my genetic heritage. That I was not condemned to a life sentence of looking into the mirror and seeing someone else staring out at me. 

“Some days I hate him so much.” He said, nuzzling into me, our legs intertwining as if just holding each other was not close enough. “I hear him down stairs and I just feel this rage inside me… and I want to just –“ 

I felt his body tense next to mine, and again, I know how he felt, and unlike him, I had words for it. “You just want to run out of your room and start swinging until they shut up.” I said, envisioning the well-worn fantasy in m head. “You want to just start hitting them again and again. And you don’t want them to pass out, because if they pass out, they can’t feel it anymore. And if they can’t feel just a little bit of the pain they’ve caused you, then what’s the point?” 

“Is that how you feel.” He asked. I felt my face grow warm as I nodded. 

“Oh, Stiles.” He said, and he pulled me into his embrace. “I never want to hurt you.” He said as I felt fresh wounds on my heart begin to bleed. “I promise you I will never hurt you.” 

And he meant it, I’m sure he meant it. 

“I didn’t mean what I said before.” He said as his arms tried to protect me from the world around us. “I didn’t mean ‘what were you thinking approaching the table cause you don’t deserve to be there.’ I mean what were you thinking doing that when Jackson was there?” I felt my mind pause as the idea I had been completely wrong about him tried to work itself out. “He’s a complete dick. He lives for doing shit like that. I though everyone knew about him and that’s why no ever tries to sit with us.” I mentally berated myself as all of the things I had thought in anger about him came back echoing back in my mind. Every time I thought I had him figured out he threw me a curve ball and I ended up scrambling for cover. “I want you to come sit with us tomorrow.” He said, pulling me back so we could see each other. 

“No.” I said, shaking my head quickly. “I was just going to ask you something.” I said, physically trying to pull away from him. 

His hands kept me pinned as he said in a calm voice. “I’m serious, I want you to sit with us and see we aren’t the stuck-up fuckers everyone thinks we are.”

I still hadn’t stopped shaking my head no. 

“Stiles, I’m serious.” His voice dropped an octave, sending chills down my spine. “Please sit with me tomorrow at lunch.” 

My head stopped moving. “Seriously?” I asked.  
Instead of answering, he kissed me. It was so much better than any yes could have been. 

The next morning I was a wreck. 

I had a very specific pattern to the way I dressed. I called it social camouflage. Since we didn’t have a lot of money, I couldn’t afford a bunch of name-brand stuff anyway, so I did most of my shopping at places most kids my age wouldn’t admit to knowing existed. Nothing had bright colours, nothing other than a T-shirt and jeans, nothing that could ever be picked out of a line-up with a dozen other invisible kids standing next to me. So far it had worked, even though there were days I hated being that person. I wanted more than just invisible, more than just playing it safe. I wanted to be the snappy dresser or the stylish guy who always wore clothes that looked like they were made just for him. People like Derek made things like a letterman jacket and a white T-shirt look like they were part of a movie wardrobe, and they drove me crazy. My first instinct was to dress down even more than normal. I mean, I was testing the limits of my ability to be ignored sitting at that table, and I had no idea how to proceed. Should I try to increase my boldness when everyone was going to stare at me anyway, or should I use the moment to break out of my role and show that maybe I was more than the high school ninja I had been up to that point? Or maybe I would just throw up all over myself and call in sick.  
I got to school and didn’t see Derek anywhere. I was hoping maybe we could go over our lines for lunch, since we really get past me asking ‘seriously?’ before making out for the rest of the night. During my first few periods I went over some topics I could bring up in case conversation seemed to be lagging. After all, I at least wanted to seem interesting to these people. The period before lunch, the desire to puke returned, and I spent half the time in the bathroom, splashing cold water on my face and trying not to pass out. When I went to my locker to ditch my books for lunch, I saw the small note that had been slid through the grille lying on the bottom. I unfolded it and saw Derek’s writing. ‘Meet you at the table,’ it said. I had never been happier in my entire life. 

I walked out of the hallway and into the quad. The sun seemed brighter, and the air smelled sweeter. I am pretty sure there were no cartoon birds circling my head as I made my way across the quad, but I saw them all the same. I saw him across the way sitting on the table. There was a pocket of space around him and his friends, as if there were an invisible velvet rope warding the common people away. I could see Jackson standing there, looking more like a guard dog than a bouncer, and I wondered why I had never noticed him before. Derek looked up and saw me; he smiled and waved me over. It was like finding a golden ticket in your candy bar. I tensed as I walked past Jackson, he seemed to ignore me, but I could see him give me a sideways glance. It was part ‘Hulk smash!’ and part ‘They really will let anyone eat here nowadays.’ I ignored him as I heard Derek call out.  
“Stiles, over here man.” 

“Hey.” I said, moving closer to him. 

“You know everyone?” He asked, knowing I didn’t. “This is Scott, Isaac, and that’s Boyd.” He said, pointing to three insanely good-looking guys sitting at the table and staring at me like I was an alien life form. “That’s Erica and Lydia…” gesturing towards the two cheerleaders sitting to his side. “And this is Kate.” He said, smiling at the beautiful blonde girl sitting next to him. “My girlfriend.” He finished, as the blood drained from my face. 

“Pleased to meet you.” I said automatically, my face a mask of congeniality. 

And then they crash. I mean, honestly, how else did you think it would end.  
When Kate reached out to shake my hand, my face held all he expression of a wax figure. 

“So you’re Derek’s tutor?” She asked in a voice that was bubblier than that of any girl I had met before. 

“Economics whore.” I said with a completely straight face. I heard Derek choke on something as he tried to intervene. 

“Excuse me?” She asked, her head cocking exactly like a curious cocker spaniel’s. 

“Okay.” I said, still not missing a beat. 

“Can I talk to you for a second?” Derek asked, his face red with emotion. 

“It was great meeting you.” I said in a tone that would have held up in court as genuine and pleasant. 

“Same.” She said slowly, obviously not sure of what just happened. 

Derek grabbed my by my elbow and dragged me away from the quad and out of earshot. “What the fuck are you doing?” 

My face would have been expressive if it had been crafted from diamond. I refused to break down in front of Derek over what had just happened. I was not going to pick up my dress hem and flee into he night. “You have to be kidding me.” I said in a tone barely capable of reaching his ears. 

“You had to know about Kate.” He said, making it sound like I was trying to argue that the world was flat despite the globe standing between us. “Everyone knows we’re going out.” 

Truth was he was right. Everyone did know that Derek and Kate were a couple. They were the high school equivalent of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Everyone knew but me. You see, high school reputation and gossip were dependant on word of mouth. And word of mouth involved people talking to other people. No one talked to me. The fact that Derek had already found his princess and I might just be the comedic sidekick – or possibly the talking animal – was starting to dawn on me. 

“I didn’t. If I did I wouldn’t have done anything with you.” I almost hissed through gritted teeth. And now he cocked his head to the side like a baffled golden retriever. “Why would you think I would fool round with you?” I demanded, realizing that we might have been existing in completely different stories the entire time. 

“Because we like each other.” He answered automatically like it was the most obvious answer to a question on some odd test. 

I refused to cover my face with and flee across the quad. “Enjoy your lunch.” I said in a tone that, on its best day, would have been referred to as ‘frosty’. I turned deliberately and smiled at Kate and the rest of the people whose names I had already forgotten. “Was awesome meeting you.” I called to her with a half wave. As soon as I rounded the corner of the music building, I threw my lunch in the trash and took off like a bullet. This was what I meant when I said things that ended rarely ended well. I’m not sure how high school kids survived before campuses became open at lunch, but I imagine it must have been a lot like living on the wrong side of the Berlin wall. The freedom to just leave campus, even if only for a few minutes, was invaluable. The area around Beacon Hills High was considered remote at best. It was built on the outskirts of the town proper, and out student population was an odd mix of the town’s wealthiest and poorest kids. The school district straddled the old projects where we lived and a strip of new housing developments where Derek’s house was. In a way, the school was considered to be a no man’s land. Behind the baseball diamonds and soccer field stood a fence that marked the end of school property and the beginning of the woods. Now calling the sparse collection of trees that lined the property was ironic at best and sarcastic at worst. No one who had ever been in actual woods would have referred to the motely grouping as anything else but what it was: the back of the school grounds. But for us, it was our place. 

Or more correctly defined, Their Place. 

It was a place where the stoners went to light up between classes, where the older kids sneaked a cigarette at lunch, and where couples went to make out whenever they wanted. The dense overhang effectively cut the light to almost nothing, making it virtually impossible to see what was happening inside without actually going in. I had never been out there before, but unlike Derek’s relationship with Kate, I knew it existed. I could feel the same heated shame creep up my face again at the thought of what a fucking fool I must have looked like, thinking that Derek could have ever been mine. He was one of the most popular people in my world; how could I have ever thought he would pick me?  
Before him, I had settled into being quietly miserable for the next four years, and Derek had come and fucked all that up. And now? What was I now? A weak and shattered stereotype in the middle of the dark woods, pining over the love he never truly had. All I needed to do was fall asleep, wake up, find it was dark, and stumble into a house made of candy or some crap. Because no matter how much my mind was trying to tell me Derek and I were something real, I knew the truth.  
I had fallen for a fairy tale. 

I spent the next hour or so packing my emotions back into the containers from which they had escaped. Previously in mint condition desire and love, still in the box, were now ruined forever as I taped up the plastic covers and tried to stack everything back where it belonged. This was not my story, and I had been a fool to think it ever could be. That is the true crime that fairy tales commit – making people like me think we counted in this world. I was neither hot nor in shape. I was just a normal boy in an extraordinary world, and stories like that, no matter how misleading and destructive, would always appeal to people like me. The Derek’s and Kate’s of the world didn’t need a storybook to tell them about happily ever after; they were consigned to that fate the moment they opened their perfect eyes and gazed out across the world. They didn’t need a trio of Alzheimer’s-impaired witches to warn them away from cursed spinning wheels, because even if they did succumb to such a cruel deception, someone would come along and make it all better. I readied myself to accept my return to my black – and – white world. Returning to a world devoid of joy and light where I simply woke up, went to school and waited until the day was over so I could go home and go back to sleep, was not, in any definition of the word, a good thing. Lather, rinse, repeat. I had no idea how long I would be forced to endure it or what happened next, but I knew wishing for more than that was just foolish. I packed up my regret, using far more mental packaging tape than necessary to make sure it didn’t open up on me by mistake, and placed it in with the rest. A thousand little feelings all locked away, each one of them screaming at me to reconsider. I sighed softly as I closed the box and made my mind up.  
Once upon a time there was a boy who didn’t get to fall in love. The End. 

I have to admit that when I got home, I expected him to be there again. I shouldn’t have, of course. After all, why would he be? My dad was gone, which meant another night of foraging for dinner, but I had absolutely no appetite. I fell back onto my bed in what was sure anyone else watching would have seen as an over-the-top dramatic flourish. At the moment, I was feeling pretty emo, so I didn’t care. I tried to push thoughts of him out of my mind, to put him back in whatever box his memory had come from, but it was a waste of time. Every time I pushed mentally, he pushed right back. I closed my eyes and I could imagine him over me again, the feel of his weight on top of me, reminding me that he was a real person and not some cartoon prince. 

But was he? 

My eyes opened and I stared at the ceiling for a long time. Was I really someone to him or was I just someone to fool around with on the side? Part of me thought I understood what had been going on, but after today, I only knew one thing for certain. Derek and I were on completely different paths, and this moment in time was where they had happened to meet.  
What he had done was simply satisfying a curiosity for him – a dalliance in a place he would never settle down in. He was just passing through the neighbourhood. I knew in my heart that the neighbourhood was where I was going to live my life. The whole liking guys thing was something he was going to work through, a stage. I was going to be the guy he brought up when he wanted to seem more worldly than he was. ‘Oh yeah, I messed around with a guy in high school.’ And he would be the guy I brought up once I’d had two drinks too many. ‘Yeah, he was my first love, and he was straight.’ 

I couldn’t blame him. After all, he was who he was, and I would always be me. I had always known deep down I was different, but now I had a name for it. 

Gay. 

The very thought of being gay gave me chills. Not because of what I thought of it but because of what others would. Jackson’s words came echoing back in my memory. Queerbait, bitch. All words that I was going to become very familiar with as time went on, I was sure. I didn’t have the same choices Derek had. I couldn’t just stop and walk away, end up dating some girl, settling down, and raising two and a half kids, average job, mortgage, bills, pretty much what the rest of the world considered normal. I wasn’t normal, and no matter how hard I tried, I was never going to be. And though I didn’t hear it at the time, a small part of me exclaimed, ‘Good!’ 

At some point, the darkness of my room gave way to the inside of my eyelids, because when the phone rang, I nearly jumped out of my bed. I looked around in confusion, not quite aware I had fallen asleep. The house was pitch black, and I hit every single sharp corner in the apartment on my way to the phone. 

“Hello?” I asked, still not sure how awake I was. 

“HI.” He said, his voice sounding small and miserable. 

“Hi.” I said back, feeling exactly how he sounded. 

“Can you talk?” He asked, which confused me for a moment until I saw the time. It was after ten at night, a time that any normal kid would get whaled on for getting phone calls. 

“Sure.” I said, taking the phone back to my room. 

He was silent a I fell back onto my bed, the darkness feeling almost welcoming to me in my misery. I could hear him breathing on the other end of the connection, but it was obvious he had no idea what came next. Finally he said, “I’m sorry.”  
And he was; I could hear it in his voice. He was truly sorry, and the very sorrow that his tone conveyed over the phone tore me apart. All I could think of was fourteen types of pain, the only thing that was real was his hurting. 

“I know.” Was all I could say back. What was there to say? I’m sorry too? For what? For kissing him back? For feeling too much? For not knowing he had a girlfriend? My eyes stung as I realized that everything was climbing out of the boxes I had just sealed. Little creatures of discomfort in my mind, pinching and tearing at anything they could find as I struggled not to make a noise. 

“I wasn’t just…,” he began and then stopped. I’m not sure if he was close to crying or just choosing his words carefully, taking cues from some invisible attorney who was there to make sure his client walked free from any and all guilt. He finally let out a huge sigh and said, “I don’t know, Stiles. I didn’t want to hurt you.” 

“I know” I said in the quietest voice I could muster. 

“But I did.” He said, not even bothering to frame it as a question. 

“I know.” He said, trying to keep everything held in but failing miserably and beginning to cry. 

I could hear him on the other end, the choking sounds of his own sobbing mixing with mine, making the saddest duet of ruefulness I had ever heard. Finally he sniffled and said with more conviction than I could have mustered at that point, “I’ll make this right, I promise.” 

He was making a vow, a vow right there to right what was wrong. Just like a prince. And damned if it didn’t feel good. I heard the muffled voice of his mom talking on the other end for a second, and then he came back. “I need to go. Can I drive you to school tomorrow?” I didn’t even know I was just nodding like an idiot until he asked hesitantly. “Stiles? You there?” 

“Yes.” I answered quickly. “And yes, you can drive me to school.” 

“Sweet.” He said, something other than grief entering his voice. “Night.” 

He hung up, but I continued to hold the phone to my ear for a long time after.  
He was going to save me. I just knew it. 

I barely slept that night. 

I tried to banish from my mind the image of a prince showing up with a horse-drawn carriage, tried to tell myself my life wasn’t like that. But no matter how I tried to ignore that fantasy, I had to admit Derek would look incredible as a Disney prince, his jet black hair carefully swept back as his bangs danced playfully above those soulful green eyes. In our school, he was practically royalty already. It wasn’t a huge leap to imagine him in the line of succession to an actual throne. ‘But you’re still not a princess.’ I head my own voice comment as my alarm clock went off. I felt completely miserable for a moment as the images in my dream drifted out of reach until they flickered out, fireflies heading off to bed in the dawn. I shook my head and got out of bed. Whatever had bothered me was only a dream. The reality was he was coming to pick me up, and that meant things had a chance to be right again. Not a huge chance, but any chance was better than what my life had been so far. I threw on whatever I pulled out of my closet first. I was so excited that I didn’t care what other people thought. Derek Hale was on his way to drive me to school, and the rest of the world could burn. I ran myself though a shower so quickly that I am sure there were whole parts of my body still dry when I got out. I squirted some hair product in my hand and spent the next twenty minutes trying to make my hair anything better than it was. Twenty-three minutes later, I jumped back in the shower and washed it out of my hair.  
I grabbed my backpack and flew out the door, half expecting to see my prince astride his bright yellow mount, sunlight gleaming off his teeth as the wind moved through his hair. When I saw he wasn’t there, I sat on my front step and waited, knowing it wasn’t going to be long. Ten minutes into waiting, I put my backpack down. He was going to be there; he was just running late. Twenty minutes and I started to pick at my shoes. Morning traffic could be horrible, I had heard once. At thirty, I knew he wasn’t showing up, but I waited anyway. At forty minutes, I was going to be late for first period. I snatched my bag up and sprinted down the street towards Foster. I cursed myself silently because I knew I had fallen for the fairy tale again. Instead of sticking to my guns and letting it go, I had to be the one romantic idiot holding up a lighter and asking for more. Life had promised me that this time I would be able to kick the football, and as always, I was lying on my back, staring at the sky and wondering what exactly had just happened. I knew what had happened. This was the kind of happy endings people like me got. 

I could hear the tardy bell ring half a block away, and I stopped running. Ten seconds or ten minutes, late was late. Unless I developed super powers in the next half second, there was nothing I could do about it. When I got to school, I could see his car in the parking lot, and the one last shred of hope I had been counting on faded away. Instead of calculus, I plodded to the office, knowing I was going to need a late slip. As I stood in line behind the other losers who couldn’t get to class on time, I wondered why we couldn’t get late slips for life. ‘Please excuse Stiles from heartbreak, as he has lived a sheltered life and has no idea how to handle something as simple as a crush.’ 

With my luck, I’d get the note and my dad would refuse to sign it. 

I groaned under my breath as I realized that they were going to call my dad and tell him I had been late, which meant having to come up with an explanation that didn’t end up pissing him off even more. Once again, I had to label this the worst day of my life. Correction, the worst day so far. 

“I thought nerds like you were never late for school.” Jackson’s voice said behind me. 

I forced myself not to tense up or turn around and confront him. I simply picked a point in front of me and concentrated on it as if it were the centre of the universe. It was an oldie but a goodie when it came to dealing with stress in my life. The thousand-yard stare, zombie brain, Franken-stare, all nicknames I had cultivated over the years for basically the same thing: shutting down every part of my brain that reacted to outside stimuli. 

“Don’t pretend you can’t hear me, you little faggot.” He said, whispering harshly as the various people who worked in the office milled about us. “I know you can.”  
The ‘don’t pretend you can’t hear me’ gambit had been a classic in my father’s repertoire of tactics to Generate a reaction from me, though Jacksons ‘faggot’ variation was new. Regardless of what style was used, my defense remained the same, continue to stare straight ahead as though the person had not spoken.  
His elbow impacted the small of my back, something between a nudge and a punch. “So what happened?” he taunted. I could see his sneer even though my back was to him. “End up taking too much time to put on your makeup? I know how you girls are, getting ready in the morning.” He thought he was funny, as he half chuckled at his own words. He could have been doing his homophobic stand up in front of a mannequin for all the response he got from me. I was surprised at how little his words stung. And I continued to dissect the far wall in front of me. I had thought that having verbal grenades hurled at me would hurt, yet all I felt when Jackson continued to taunt me was exhaustion. I was seventeen, and I was already weary of the world. Jackson’s give and not-take limped along for a few more minutes as person after person in line ahead of me stood in front of the assistant principal and gave them their sob story of why they were late for first period. I’m not sure why we worried so much about what we were going to say. No matter how creative the excuse might be, we were still going to have a tardy slip pushed into our fingers, and they were going to inform our parents. I tried to focus on the stories instead of Jackson in hopes that, at the very least, it would dissuade him from continuing. The girl in front of me walked in, and despite all of my intentions, my mind began to prepare an excuse. 

I’m sorry, but the guy whom I had imagined into my boyfriend promised he’d pick me up, and like the pathetic little boy I am, I waited for him until there was no way for me to make it on time without using a rocket pack. Can I get a ‘I’m a new homosexual and fell for my first straight guy’ pass and move on, please?

At precisely the same moment, Jackson finally succeeded in getting me to react to something. 

“Don’t think I won’t kick your ass.” He warned darkly. “Your boyfriend Derek isn’t here to save you.” 

I spun around, dropped my backpack, and shoved him as hard as I could with both hands. “he isn’t my fucking boyfriend and I don’t need anyone to save me!”  
Jackson fell back on his ass with a loud thud as the people behind him backed away in startled panic. However, if anyone was going to take home the award for Most Shocked, the race was a tie between Jackson and me. He gaped up at me, eyes wide not from fear or pain but from complete and utter outrage. My eyes were wide not from anger or frustration but from complete and utter fear. 

“What the fuck did I just do?” I muttered under my breath. 

“What the fuck did you just do?” Jackson roared, jumping up to his feet. He looked like a bull charging, his face red, nostrils flared. I suppose a quicker man than I would have moved out of the way, but frankly I was still too stunned. I had actually put my hands on someone else in anger. If I had ever held any illusions about my ability to play football, they were quickly shattered as his head, fist, arms, and shoulders made contact with my abs and I felt what air I had left in my lungs relocate to someplace less violent than my body. I went down like a straw man, Jackson’s momentum throwing us into the assistant principal’s office. The girl who was in the middle of her well-rehearsed excuse let out a screech as she stared down at the nightmare sight of two teenage boys struggling for dominance at her feet. I couldn’t draw a breath to save my life, but the fact I wasn’t fighting back wasn’t slowing Jackson down in the least. He connected two solid hits to my face before Mr Harris pulled him off me. My body curled automatically into a fetal position as I struggled to haul any oxygen in the vicinity into my lungs. I could already feel the side of my face pulsing from his punch. Part of my brain judged it to be a solid six out of ten, good impact, decent follow through, bruising for the next two weeks and tenderness for at least a month. For a first timer, Jackson had made a decent attempt. It was the second time that week I had to be saved from that troll, and it was getting old fast. As I hesitantly began to draw breath again, I forced myself up off the ground, pushing past the pain that made up my face. Someone as old and out of shape as Mr Harris could hold someone as built as Jackson only because Mr Harris was an authority figure. Jackson was the same age as I was, but from that point on, we couldn’t have been more different. Jackson had had respect for adults and their word ingrained into his head since he could walk. I had never once in my life ever respected any adult. My father was my daily reminder that behind all of their talk and bluster, adults were just taller assholes who could drive. 

Jackson saw me turn towards him and, the second before I swung my fist into his balls, tried to get free of Harris’s grip. I had never thrown a real punch before, but I had been on the receiving end of more than enough blows to know how to hurt someone. Operating on pure instinct, he jumped back, trying to avoid as much of my hand’s impact as he could. Jackson’s legs propelled him back into the assistant principal, who hadn’t even been aware that I had taken a swing. The two of them fell back in a tangle of screams and cursing. It took everything I had not to jump on Jackson when he was prone and keep whaling on him. My mind refused to recognise what we were doing as a scuffle or even a fight. Jackson wasn’t just another guy who was fucking with me; he wasn’t just a homophobic douche who would not let up on me. Jackson had become more than just one person; he was the symbol of everything that was menacing in my life. He was a dragon, and I was done waiting for someone to slay him to protect me. I’d do it myself. 

“Touch me again and I swear to you I’ll kill you.” I snarled as Jackson rocked back and forth on the floor, his hands cupping his aching testicles. I’m not sure if he heard what I was saying, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t saying it for his benefit. “I don’t care who you are; leave me the fuck alone!” 

I looked up in time to see someone hold their cell up and snap a picture. The flash made me blink a few times as I tried to clear my eyes. The faces of the people in the office were burnt into my mind in that split second. The look of abject horror and shock on every single one of them stopped me cold in my tracks. I knew that look. I knew it well. I’d seen t too many times in my life, but never once had it been directed at me. They were looking at me like I was the monster. Me? I wasn’t the monster, he was. I was the hero. I was the knight who had put this ogre in his place and…  
I looked down and saw Jackson still gripping his crotch, his eyes closed in obvious agony. And here I was, standing over him, screaming at him. The same way he had in the quad.  
“But I’m the hero.” I muttered as one of the many adults who had come rushing at the sound of a fight clamped a hand down on my shoulder and led me away. This wasn’t the way the story was supposed to go. I thought the hero was rewarded after he slew the dragon. 

I was tossed into an empty office. I think it might have belonged to a guidance counsellor. A dilapidated poster of a pissed-off looking cat hanging onto a rope telling me to Hang In There looked like it might be older than I was. I always felt sorry for the people who actually trained to do guidance counselling. Trying to inspire a generation of, at best, apathetic teenagers who weren’t able to conceive of life past the end of the current week, and much less college, had to be a lot like running full-tilt at a wall and hoping you would somehow pass through it instead of slamming into it. No one cared less about the future than a high school student. The future had no bearing at all on the importance of now. Nothing was more important to us than now, and right now, I was screwed. The only silver lining of this very, very dark cloud was that between being told I had been late for school and that I had teed off on a guy’s junk while he was being held by the assistant principal, the tardy thing would be a distant second in my father’s mind. I had no idea what had gone wrong in my life. Exactly one week ago, I had been a faceless nobody wandering the hall; now I was going to be the guy who punched Jackson Whitmore in the balls. Shortly after that, I’d be known as the guy who got killed by his dad. About twenty minutes later, one of the principles walked in. His face showed that this was far too early in the day to be dealing with something as serious as two students fighting. He had a file in his hand, and before addressing me, he had to look down and check my name. “Stiles, can you tell me what happened?” 

I said nothing. I was pretty sure of my rights, and though it was highly dubious that I was going to get read my Miranda rights for a high school scuffle, I held my ground nonetheless. If he had been expecting an answer, he didn’t give any indication as he kept flipping pages. “Jackson is the same boy you had a problem with in the quad earlier this week, isn’t he?” Again, I sat and said nothing.  
“Look Stiles.” He said, sighing as he closed the file. “You seem like a good kid. Great grades, no tardies or absents. Before this week, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in here. When something like this happens, it can be the start of a pattern. Things like fights and arguments out of nowhere are usually cries for help. Is this what is happening here?” 

I looked up at him, acknowledging him for the first time since he had entered the room. He paused when he saw my reaction. “Why?” I asked with absolutely no emotion in my voice whatsoever. 

“Why what?” He asked, confused by the query. 

“Why would you care if it was a cry for help?” I clarified. 

His voice gave off a pleasing, concerned tone and he said, “Because we want to help.”

“Okay.” I said, frankly not caring anymore about anything. “My father is a drunk, he is rarely home and when he is I’m terrified of what he might say or do. I think I’m gay and may have fallen in love with a guy who in no way possible can love me back. And I’m pretty sure that Jackson and I are on a collision course that is going to end with one of us killing the other. And we both know who is going to win that fight. So please, help me.” 

His face had gone pale as the exact toll of everything I had just rattled off sank in.  
“Can you get me a new dad? Can you sober him up? Can you make me straight? Can you make him gay? Can you stop Jackson before he kills me?” 

He shook his head no slowly, I’m sure he didn’t even know he was doing it consciously. 

“See, this is the problem with cries for help. Even if people hear them, they can’t do a damn thing about them.” 

We sat there, him stunned into silence as he came to the realisation that teenage problems might not be as easy to face and resolve as he had once believed and me lamenting that even with the confession, my life was still in the same, completely shitty place it had been before. “Can I go back to class, or am I suspended?” 

He didn’t say anything for several seconds, and then he realised I had asked a question he could answer. “We can’t get ahold of your father. Do you feel up to finishing the day?” 

I grabbed my backpack and levelled him with a look. “No. But when has that changed anything?” 

He didn’t stop me as I walked out. 

I’m not sure if the word had travelled by some form of telepathy or just insanely rapid texting, but by the time I walked into third period, everyone knew what had gone done. They all stared at me, whispering as though I was Edward Cullen, except not as tall and no where near as handsome. I realized quickly I didn’t like my newfound celebrity at all. I didn’t want to be stared at, and I certainly didn’t like being talked about. The worst part was that there buzzing was just below my threshold of hearing. I caught my name, Jackson’s once, even Derek’s, but anything else drowned itself out into the repetitious droning that made me think of grown-ups talking in the Peanuts cartoons. By the time lunch rolled around, I was in an even worse mood than I had been when I had arrived at school. I dreaded stepping foot into the quad. I wasn’t sure who I wanted to see less, Jackson or Derek. I opted to just stay away from people altogether and eat my lunch by the backstops of the lacrosse field. There was never anyone there outside of gym and practice, and that suited me just fine. Once in a while, I saw a lone straggler make the trek past me to the woods, but no one saw me. That worked for me. I took a bite of my tasteless sandwich and tried to count how many days I had left until I was out of High School. 

“You sure don’t make it easy for a guy to find you.” Derek said, poking his head around the corner of my backstop. 

I felt my throat constrict in panic, and I began coughing violently as I tried to swallow. He rushed over to me and began patting me on the back, which never seemed to do anything for anyone but which was the physical reaction of choice when one was choking. “Hey, come on.” He said, pulling a can of pepsi out of his jacket pocket. “Here, take a drink.” He said, popping the top before handing it over.  
I took a greedy gulp and felt the lump of food go down and air return to my lungs. 

I coughed a few times as I handed the can back to him. “Thanks.” 

He shook his head and pulled another out of the opposite pocket. “That one’s yours, keep it.” 

I tried not to marvel at the fact that he had bought an extra one for me and concentrated on the fact that he left me high and dry this morning. I took another drink as we sat there, staring out across the lacrosse field in silence. “So you had a day.” He said casually. 

I glanced over at him for a second to see if he was making a lame attempt at a joke or if he was actually asking me a question. The way the afternoon light hit his skin and shone on his face was distracting, so I looked away quickly. “One way of putting it.” 

“Was the fight about me?” He asked, still not looking over at me. 

I sighed, knowing it had been and yet had nothing to do with him at the same time. “No, Jackson just pissed me off.” I said, taking another bite. 

“You pissed at me?” 

I looked over at him. “Why shouldn’t I be?” I said so bitterly that he finally stared directly at me. “Do you know how long I waited for you to show up?” I forced the stinging in my eyes away. I wasn’t going to be a whiny little bitch. I refused to collapse into myself under the crushing weight of self-pity. “Do you know how that made me feel?” 

He looked down as he saw the raw pain in my eyes. He must have known that most of it had been caused by him. “I know, I’m sorry.” He said, sounding more like a sad child than a teenage jock. 

“Where were you?” I implored, wishing I could keep the pain out of my voice.  
“Kate called and needed a ride and I – and I just – “ He put his head between his hands as his words disintegrated into murmuring. 

“Look, Derek, I didn’t ask you to pick me up, that was your idea. I didn’t ask you to kiss me, that was you. And I didn’t ask to be put into a situation where you were going to push me to the ground out of sight every time someone walked by. I am not going to sit here and be treated like an embarrassment by you. It was nice knowing you. I hope you find what you’re looking for.” I said as I tossed my bag into the trash and got up to leave. 

“And what if I was looking for you?” He asked. 

I paused as I saw the naked emotion on his face and knew it was reflected on my own. But I was done running at that football only to have it pulled away at the last second. “Well, congratulations. You found me.” I said miserably. 

He said nothing as I walked away. 

I had almost made it to the door nearest my locker when Jackson spotted me from across the quad. He was obviously sick of having to explain his side of the story to every person who walked up and asked him. Punching Jackson was an act of either incredible bravery or plain stupidity. Either way, I had no proper response for people’s questions. From the viewpoint of Jacksons friends and teammates, him being hit by me was a different story. For that news, there was only one reaction that seemed proper, laughing out loud combined with a huge amount of pointing. 

So when he saw me trying to skulk away, he knew he was being given one chance to change the story once and for all. “Hey!” He screamed as he made a beeline toward me. “Where you running to, fag?” He added. 

I stopped and turned around. 

He had brought a crowd, of course. There was no way anyone was going to miss what people sensed was coming next. Normally people paid good money to see a fight like this on pay-per-view. To find it free in your own backyard, well, that was just too tempting. I should have been scared, I should have been terrified of the attention. Half the school was starring at me, every person waiting for me to get my ass kicked. But I wasn’t – not scared, not terrified. I’d had enough, and to be honest, I wasn’t talking about Jackson or Derek. I’d had enough of running away from my life, of holding my breath waiting for things to get better by themselves. Jackson started off by pushing me, which, as first moves go, has been a steadfast classic for boys since second grade. I didn’t go flying back, I didn’t cry out from the impact. I braced myself and pushed him back as hard as I could. His eyes widened as he realized I wasn’t going to beg for mercy in front of everyone. What Jackson didn’t see was that I was no longer just standing up to him and his actions of the past few days. In my mind, this wasn’t about him and me and what we had done to each other. This was about a life spent in fear. A fear of people finding out who and what I really was. A fear that if I ever exposed who I really was, I would be shunned and hated for it. A fear that my dad would beat me up because he suspected who I was. But honestly, how was that any different from the way I was already living life. I was alone, friendless, and generally considered odd by the few people who even realised I existed, so what did it matter if they found out? I was done running – from being gay, from my dad, from myself. I was the hero of this story, and it was damn time to start acting like I was. 

“So you think you’re a tough guy now?” Jackson sneered, jabbing another finger against my chest to make his point. 

I slapped his finger away and took a half step towards him. “I didn’t start this Jackson.” I said in a calm voice. “But if you think I’m afraid of you, you’re nuts.” 

He jumped at me suddenly and I jerked back, realizing too late he was only trying to get a reaction out of me. He laughed, and everyone echoed him. “You seem pretty scared to me there, fairy.” 

“What the fuck is your problem?” I roared back, the words clawing up from deep inside me. Jackson flinched and brought his fists up to defend his face automatically. “What did I do to you, Jackson? What have I ever done to you?”

“Queers like you make me sick.” He said, almost spitting. 

“Why is that? Why do you care about what I am, Jackson?” I countered. 

His eyes narrowed. “You saying you’re queer?” He looked around him. “Did you here that? He admitted it.” 

“So what if I am?” I said, not caring anymore. “How does that affect you?” 

His expression froze as he realised I wasn’t going to argue with him about my sexuality. And I understood suddenly that mocking my sexuality was the only club in his bag. 

“I mean, seriously, Jackson? Why would you care about what I do or don’t do? Are you so fucked up that just having someone different around you is a threat? Are you that scared about catching the gay that your only answer is to start hitting people?” 

There were a few chuckles from the crowd as it started to turn on Jackson. 

“I don’t give a damn what you do.” He shot back. 

“Then why are you always in my face about it? I mean, come on Jackson, what have I ever done to you?” 

He sputtered as he tried to rattle off something but I didn’t give him a chance. 

“People are different, you fucking douche bag. Every single one of us likes what we like, and no one asked you for permission.” There were a couple of shouted ‘Yeahs!’ from the back of the crowd, and I felt emboldened. “I don’t care if you like me or not, Jackson. And I don’t care if you like the way I live my life or not. But I am not going to run scared every time you feel threatened by my sexuality. Real men aren’t scared of things like that.” 

“You saying I’m not a real man?” Jackson growled, and I realised I was about to get punched. 

“I’m saying you’re not a real man.” Derek said from the side, grabbing everyone’s attention instantly. 

“You don’t have to do this.” I said to him quietly, trying to give him a way out.

“Yes. I do.” He said solemnly. 

“What is your problem anyways dude? Derek asked as he strode towards Jackson.

“You think anyone who like guys is a girly guy? Some kind of fag that you can just beat down whenever you want?” 

Jackson laughed. “You calling that a real man?” he said, pointing at me. 

Derek looked back at me and smiled. “I think he’s the only real man here right now.” And then he turned back to Jackson. “He is standing here, unafraid, backing up who he is and what he believes in. If that doesn’t make him a man, I’m not sure what does.” 

“Slobbering on some guy’s know sure doesn’t.” Jackson answered. 

“Why Jackson?” Derek asked, pausing for effect. “When we were in junior high, you slobbered on my know at football camp pretty well if I recall.” 

There was an explosion of stunned gasps and laughter as Jackson’s face turned dark red. “Bullshit! You can’t prove that!” 

Derek shrugged. “Don’t have to. Why would I lie about that?” He said, more to the crowd than to Jackson. “Who cares anyway?” He said. “No one here is who they say they are. And we all know it.” He began looking around the crowd. “Some of us throw up to stay skinny, some of us have sex to stay popular, some of us beat up people to hide what’s inside.” And he paused and looked at me. “And some of us hurt the ones we care for just to stay hidden.” 

I shook my head no, but he ignored me. 

“I like guys too, Jackson.” He said, still staring at me. You could have heard a pin drop in the shocked silence. “And if you have a problem with Stiles, you have a problem with me.” 

:I don’t need you to save me.” I said softly. 

“I’m not.” He said, taking another step closer. “I’m saving myself.” 

And he kissed me. 

Some people looked away, some people stared gawking, and others cheered as I felt myself kiss him back. Time seemed to stop in that moment, and it was just two of us, caught forever in that kiss. 

He pulled back and said aloud. “So anyone else wanna call me or Stiles here a fag?” No one said a word. “Because the next time I hear it, I’m not going to let it slide.” 

Jackson gaped at Derek and then at me, and damned if he didn’t look a little jealous. “Fucking queerbait.” He said before pushing his way out of the circle of people. The crowd began to disperse as the first bell rang for fifth period, leaving just him and me standing there. 

“Why did you do that?” I finally asked. 

“Because I wanted to.” He said, moving closer, putting his hands on my shoulders. “Because I’m tired of thinking I’m broken or fucked up. And you made me realise back there that I wasn’t those things at all.” 

“I did?” I asked, still feeling very much broken and fucked up. 

He nodded and leaned in for another kiss. “We’re not broken, you idiot.” He said, pressing in closer. “We were just two parts looking for the other piece.” 

“So what do we do now?” I asked. 

He shrugged again. "I don’t know.” He answered honestly. “But I know one thing.” 

“What?” 

“We do it together.” And he kissed me again. 

I don’t remember the moment I knew I was broken… but I do know the moment I began to feel fixed.  
It was the day the green-eyed boy fell in love with me.


End file.
